The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle

[Zadius Sky]

From Amazon:

In the spring of 1919, Sigmund Freud brought his closest colleagues - Ferenczl, Abraham, Rank, Sachs and Jones - together and gave them each a golden ring, symbolizing the formation of a new force in psycho-analysis and securing their undying loyalty to the Master. Freud called this group his "Secret Committee". This inner circle of men, given to bickering and infighting, helped Freud expel Carl Jung and was to set the ground rules of psycho-analysis for decades to come. The author examines the complexity of the relationships between these men, whose personal and professional lives were absolutely dominated by Freud. The author also wrote biographies of Havelock Ellis and Melanie Klein.

I had just finished reading The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis by Phyllis Grosskurth (1991) and it was an interesting read, especially the correspondences between Freud and the members of the "Secret Committee." This book talks about the history of this secret committee, which was made to ensure the continuation of the existence of the psychoanalysis movement. This committee was initially consisted of Ernest Jones, Karl Abraham, Otto Rank, Hanns Sachs, Sandor Ferenczi, with Freud as its "ringleader" (Max Eitingon didn't joined until 1919).

The title, The Secret Ring, referred to the rings given to the members of the committee by Freud.

Here's an excerpt from the Introduction:

I began to rethink the inherent significance of the Committee, whose members had each received a special ring of friendship from Freud. It occurred to me that the story of the Committee might serve as a metaphor for the psychoanalytic movement itself. The force of Freud's personality and ideas had engendered a cult of personality in which Freud, as guru, had demanded complete personal and professional loyalty. In bestowing the rings on the members of the Committee, he hoped to become their ringmaster, exerting absolute control over them.

The subtext of psychoanalytic history is the story of how Freud manipulated and influenced his followers and successors. Their general passivity caused them to remain in thrall to an interminable analysis. By insisting that the Committee must be absolutely secret, Freud enshrined the principle of confidentiality. The various psychoanalytic societies that emerged from the Committee were like Communist cells, in which the members vowed eternal obedience to their leader. Psychoanalysis became institutionalized by the founding of journals and the training of candidates; in short, an extraordinarily effective political entity.

Great leaders may be venerated, or idolized, but the cult of leadership demands that they be remote. Freud was just such a leader. The early psychoanalysis movement took the form of an extended family whose origin was the idealized family of the Committee. It was a male family of sons led by a patriarchal father, but conspicuous in its lack of a nurturing mother.

Undoubtedly, Freud's own early family life - a cold, strong mother, a shadowy father, and four younger sisters to whom he felt superior - explains something about the dynamic of the self-created family, the Committee. Freud was a withholding parent, whose "adopted" children (the Committee) hungered for his attention. Quarreling among themselves in their rivalry for Freud's attention, the members of the Committee were bound even more closely to him. Freud ultimately chose as his successor his own daughter, Anna, who had a will as strong as his own, and who possessed the same agile, political instincts. For years, she operated as the palace guard.

More on the rings:

In May 1913, Jones left the University of Toronto forever, determined to try to rehabilitate himself in England. Late in the month, he joined the other Committee members in Vienna for the their official gathering. On the morning of May 25, Freud had a private talk with his favorite disciple, Ferenczi. In the afternoon, he met with the entire Committee: Ferenczi, Rank, Sachs, Jones, and Abraham. Ferenczi led a discussion of the critique Freud had asked him to write of Jung's views on the libido, and the meeting culminated with Freud presenting each of the Committee members with an ancient intaglio from his collection of antiquities. These they subsequently had mounted in gold rings. Freud himself wrote one incised with the head of Jupiter. Traditionally intaglios had been used as seals on contracts before written signatures were used to certify important documents. The rings were pledges of eternal union, symbolizing the allegiance of a band of brothers to their symbolic father, Freud the ring-giver.

It wasn't Freud's idea to form the "Committee." It was Ernest Jones' suggestion that "a secret committee be formed as a Praetorian guard around Freud" and the "unstated" aim was to monitor Carl Jung and to maintain a watching brief in which they would report to Freud but the main task was to "preserve the purity of psychoanalytic theory." This has occurred in late 1912 when there were "disagreements" between Jung and Freud. Of course, Freud was very enthusiastic about it and was intrigued by the "secret" aspect of this committee. Freud used his own theory as a "loyalty oath" of this committee and any "rejection of any part of the theory meant personal rejection of him" and "anyone whose ideas differed from his own, Freud described as an 'enemy.'" (51, 53). Whoa, talk about a cult.

This committee didn't last for long because the members didn't "get along with each other." The author pointed out that the "fantasy had been dissolved by the harsh reality of human beings unable to get along together" (195). The "last" meeting to which Freud participated was in mid-1926 and a year later, that committee "converted" into a group of officials of the International Association.

Other thing that is of a disturbing note from reading this book is the event surrounding the death of Pauline Silberstein, the wife of Eduard Silberstein, an early friend of Freud's in late 19th century and who Freud was trying to "control."

Silberstein never practiced law, choosing instead to become a banker like his father, and to marry a woman he fell deeply in love with between 1881 and 1891. To his dowerless fiancée, Martha Bernays, Freud later discussed Silberstein's wife as "a stupid, rich girl."

Although the letters between Freud and Silberstein ended abruptly in 1881 (Freud ascribed their drifting apart as due to his engagement to Martha), the story of the relationship between two men did not end there. Silberstein's wife, Pauline, suffered from severe depression. There must have been an exchange of letters (which have since disappeared) when Silberstein wrote to arrange for Pauline to go to Vienna to be treated by Freud, who was by then specializing in hysterical patients. How long she was in treatment we have no way of knowing. What we do know is that on May 14, 1891, she fell to her death in Freud's apartment building at 8 Maria Theresienstrasse. We do not know whether it was before or after Freud had seen her, and the account in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt for May 15, 1891, did not mention any names. According to the newspaper report, she threw herself down the stairwell from the third floor, but we do not know on which floor Freud practiced.

In any event, Freud must have believed that the incident would be seen by Silberstein as a failure on Freud's part, although Silberstein did not seem to bear him ill will or to hold him responsible for his wife's death. After 1881, there exists a single letter from Freud dated April 28, 1910. Apparently Silberstein had written to him the previous year congratulating him (presumably) on his birthday, but Freud had not bothered to reply. "Now life is running out," Freud commented. His mood was somber as he briefly explained that he had encountered many difficulties in his scientific life; he wrote that he "might now be a well-to-do man had I not preferred a large family." Silberstein had apparently offered to send him some patients, and Freud replied loftily that he would "refer them to my many pupils, who will treat them as I will suggest, but I myself cannot take on anything more this season." He possibly felt that he could not risk another failure; but lest Silberstein was in any doubt about Freud's stature, he assured him that he was the leader of a great movement in the interpretation of nervous diseases, a movement that was gaining widespread recognition and on which he had lectured in America the previous year. The letter was signed "Your Old Freud." Freud never mentioned Silberstein to anyone else, except in 1928 when the B'nai B'rith in Brăila asked him to send a few words to commemorate Silberstein's death in 1925.

The above led me to think that Freud may have been involved with her death.

Anyway, this book is an interesting reading about Freud's life and his "secret committee" and how they enforced the "continence" of the psychoanalysis movement. Timothy D. Wilson (of Strangers To Ourselves) has pointed out that "an important part of the Freudian legacy was a rejection of the scientific method as a means of studying the mind." And, the "Secret Committee" was the force behind the continuance of Freud's theory. A committee based on a bad seed: narcissism.

I have not read Michel Onfray's book on Freud as discussed in this thread since it has not been out in English yet.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Thanks for that review, Zadius Sky. Very interesting.