Vienna, 1916. Freud decided to canonise himself. In front of the audience which had come to hear the eighteenth of his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, given at the University of Vienna, the founder of psychoanalysis undertook to indicate his place in the history of humanity.The history of the World, I said already, was the Biography of Great Men.
Carlyle (1959 [1841]), 251
Copernicus, Darwin, Freud: this genealogy of the de-centred man of modernity is by now so familiar to us that we no longer note its profoundly arbitrary character. This is not because one should necessarily be offended by the evident immodesty of the historical tableau presented by Freud. After all, Kant was not especially humble when he spoke of effecting a ‘Copernican revolution’ in philosophy,2 and Darwin did not hesitate to predict that his theory would provoke a ‘considerable revolution’3 in natural history. As Bernard I. Cohen and Roy Porter4 have shown, the motif of the ‘revolutions’ effected by Copernicus, Galileo and Newton is a commonplace in the history of science since Fontenelle and the encyclopédistes, and Freud was certainly not the first, nor will he be the last, to recycle it to his advantage. However, he was by no means the only figure in psychology to do this, which immediately relativises his version of the evolution of the sciences. At the end of the nineteenth century, there was a veritable plethora of candidates vying for the title of the Darwin, Galileo or Newton of psychology. But how did Freud’s audience, and indeed so many others, come to believe in Freud’s entitlement, rather than that of one of his rivals?Sigmund Freud: But in thus emphasizing the unconscious in mental life we have conjured up the most evil spirits of criticism against psycho-analysis. Do not be surprised at this, and do not suppose that the resistance to us rests only on the understandable difficulty of the unconscious or the relative inaccessibility of the experiences which provide evidence of it. Its source, I think, lies deeper. In the course of centuries the naive self-love of men has had to submit to two major blows at the hands of science. The first was when they learnt that our earth was not the center of the universe but only a tiny fragment of a cosmic system of scarcely imaginable vastness. This is associated in our minds with the name of Copernicus, though something similar had already been asserted by Alexandrian science. The second blow fell when biological research destroyed man’s supposedly privileged place in creation and proved his descent from the animal kingdom and his ineradicable animal nature. This revaluation has been accomplished in our days by Darwin, Wallace and their predecessors, though not without the most violent contemporary opposition. But human megalomania will have suffered its third and most wounding blow from the psychological research of the present time which seeks to prove to the ego that it is not even master in its own house, but must be content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in its mind. We psycho-analysts were not the first and not the only ones to utter this call to introspection; but it seems to be our fate to give it its most forcible expression and to support it with empirical material which affects every individual. Hence arises the general revolt against our science, the disregard of all considerations of academic civility and the releasing of the opposition from every restraint of impartial logic.1
According to Freud, the originality of psychoanalysis lay in the fact that it had accomplished in psychology the same type of scientific revolution which Copernicus and Darwin had effected in cosmology and biology. However, this ambition was one shared by many psychologists at the end of the nineteenth century, from Wundt to Brentano, from Ebbinghaus to William James.
From all sides, it was maintained that psychology had to separate itself from theology, philosophy, literature and other disciplines to take its rightful place in the orchestra of the sciences. Armchair speculation would give way to the rigours of the laboratory. When the Swiss psychologist Théodore Flournoy obtained his chair in psychology, he insisted that it be placed in the faculty of sciences.Franz Brentano: We must strive to achieve here what mathematics, physics, chemistry and physiology have already accomplished . . . a nucleus of generally recognized truth to which, through the combined efforts of many forces, new crystals will adhere on all sides. In place of psychologies we must seek to create a psychology.5
Taken together, Brentano’s imperative and Flournoy’s reservations depict the ‘will to science’ (Isabelle Stengers)7 which historically presided over the setting up of the new discipline. ‘Scientific’ psychology didn’t emerge as the fruit of a lucky discovery, a fortuitous invention, or by some ill-defined process of natural development. It was desired by its various promoters, and imagined on the model of the natural sciences. It was envisaged that psychology would complete the scientific revolution through applying the scientific method to all aspects of human life. Until then, knowledge of Man had been scattered between the stories of myth and religion, the speculations of philosophy, the maxims of morality, and the intuitions of art and literature. Psychology would replace these incomplete and partial knowledges by a true science of Man, with laws as universal as physics and methods as certain as those of chemistry.Théodore Flournoy: In placing this chair in the faculty of sciences, rather than in that of letters where all the courses of philosophy are found, the Genevan government has implicitly recognized (perhaps without knowing it) the existence of psychology as a particular science, independent of all philosophical systems, with the same claims as physics, botany, astronomy . . . As for knowing up to what point contemporary psychology does justice to this declaration of the majority, and has truly succeeded in freeing itself from all metaphysical tutelage of any colour, that is another question. For here not less than elsewhere the idea should not be confounded with reality.6
From the very beginning, the ‘new psychology’ presented itself as an ‘imitation’ of the natural sciences (a sort of scientific version of the ‘imitation of the Ancients’). The philosopher Alasdair McIntyre remarked, ‘pre-Newtonian physicists had . . . the advantage over contemporary experimental psychologists that they did not know that they were waiting for Newton’.9 By contrast, the new self-styled psychologists inevitably simulated the science to come. The most perspicacious asked whether psychology would ever obtain the heights of its models.Freud: The intellect and mind are objects for scientific research in exactly the same way as any non-human things. Psycho-analysis has a special right to speak for the scientific Weltanschauung at this point . . . Its special contribution to science lies precisely in having extended research to the mental field. And, incidentally, without such a psychology science would be very incomplete.8
For James, psychology was only the ‘hope of a science’, the preparatory work for its Galileo and Newton, who were yet to come. The Berlin psychologist William Stern was of a similar view. In 1900, in an article to salute the new century, he drew up a largely negative balance sheet of the new discipline. One was far from the unity sought by figures such as Brentano. Aside from an empirical tendency and the use of experimental methods, he saw little in the way of common features. There were many laboratories with researchers working on special problems, together with many textbooks, but they were all characterised by a pervasive particularism. The psychological map of the day, Stern wrote, was as colourful and chequered as that of Germany in the epoch of small states.William James to James Sully, 8 July 1890: It seems to me that psychology is like physics before Galileo’s time – not a single elementary law yet caught glimpse of. A great chance for some future psychologue to make a name greater than Newton’s; but who then will read the books of this generation? Not many I trow.10
James, 1890: When, then, we talk of ‘psychology as a natural science’ we must not assume that means a sort of psychology that stands at last on a solid ground . . . it is indeed strange to hear people talk triumphantly of ‘the New Psychology’ and write ‘Histories of Psychology’, when into the real elements and forces which the word covers not the first glimpse of clear insight exists . . . This is no science, it is only the hope of science . . . But at present psychology is in the condition of physics before Galileo and the laws of motion, of chemistry before Lavoisier and the notion that mass is preserved in all reactions. The Galileo and the Lavoisier of psychology will be famous men indeed when they come, as come they some day surely will.11
Already by the turn of the century, there was little consensus in psychology. Thus, for psychologists, the task became one not only of distinguishing the new psychology from what had gone before, but of forwarding their own claims to form the one scientific psychology, over that of their colleagues. Rhetorical analogies to scientific heroes readily lent themselves to such a situation. A number of figures suggested candidates for the role of the new Galileo or Newton of psychology. Théodore Flournoy placed the laurel on Frederic Myers, one of the founders of psychical research.William Stern: [Psychologists] often speak different languages, and the portraits that they draw up of the psyche are painted with so many different colours and with so many differently accented special strokes that it often becomes difficult to recognize the identity of the represented object . . . In short: there are many new psychologies, but not yet the new psychology.12
For Flournoy, who had by then read and reviewed Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, the founding genius of psychology wasn’t Freud, but Myers. Likewise, Stanley Hall stated in 1909 that ‘the present psychological situation calls out for a new Darwin of the mind’.14 In 1912, Arnold Gesell proclaimed it was Hall himself who was the ‘Darwin of psychology’.15 Hall later recalled that this ‘gave me more inner satisfaction than any compliment ever paid me by the most perfervid friend’.16 Others nominated Freud.Flournoy: Nothing permits one to foresee the end that the future reserves to the spiritist doctrine of Myers. If future discoveries will come to confirm his thesis of the empirically verified intervention of the discarnate in the physical or psychological frame of our phenomenal world, then his name will be inscribed in the golden book of the great initiators, and join those of Copernicus and Darwin; he will complete the triad of geniuses having most profoundly revolutionized scientific thought in the cosmological, biological, psychological order.13
The disciple in question was Ernest Jones, who flattered himself with having been the first to have accorded Freud the title of ‘Darwin of the mind’ in his Papers on Psycho-Analysis of 1913.20 In 1918, in the course of a debate with the psychologists William Rivers and Maurice Nicoll, the latter representing Jung, Jones expanded upon this analogy.C. G. Jung: Freud could be refuted only by one who has made repeated use of the psychoanalytic method and who really investigates as Freud does . . . He who does not or cannot do this should not pronounce judgment on Freud, else he acts like those notorious men of science who disdained to look through Galileo’s telescope.17
Eugen Bleuler to Freud, 19 October 1910: One compares [your work] with that of Darwin, Copernicus and Semmelweis. I believe too that for psychology your discoveries are equally fundamental as the theories of those men are for other branches of science, no matter whether or not one evaluates the advancements in psychology as highly as those in other sciences.18
David Eder: The work of Freud in psychology has been compared by one of his disciples to that of Darwin in psychology.19
Thus one sees that the question of who posterity would view as being the founding genius of psychology was hotly debated at precisely the same time when Freud nominated himself. This self-canonisation, which has been taken as self-evident, immediately loses its authority, and appears for what it was: a peremptory attempt by Freud and his followers to act as if posterity had already unilaterally settled the debates between psychoanalysis and other psychologies in their favour, and discarded any other claimants to this position. Some figures vigorously protested.Ernest Jones: The contrast between this [Jung’s] view and Freud’s is just the same as that between the positions adopted by Drummond and Wallace, on the one hand, and Darwin and Huxley on the other, regarding the origin of the mind and soul – a matter which in the scientific world was decided half a century ago.21
Frank J. Sulloway: Jones saw himself in relation to Freud as T. H. Huxley – ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ – had stood to the embattled Darwin a half century earlier.22
So why should we have faith in Freud, rather than in his rivals? Because Freud ‘triumphed’ to such a degree that we hardly remember names such as Stern, Flournoy, Hall, Myers or McDougall? Because the ‘scientific revolution’ effected by this new Copernicus banished them to the realms of pseudo-science? This would be to invoke precisely what one is attempting to explain. This would amount to begging the question, conceding everything to the ‘victor’, whereas we would like to know precisely how he won and why. Was it because Freud’s competitors were finally forced to concede defeat? Because a consensus emerged around his theories, despite the ‘violent oppositions’ and the ‘resistance to psychoanalysis’ that he alleged? Or was it, quite simply, because he managed to make everyone forget the controversy itself, and even the existence of many of his rivals?William McDougall: The only authority we have for accepting this [the theory of the social bond presented by Freud in his Group Psychology] as the necessary and sole permissible line of speculation, for regarding our explanation of social phenomena as necessarily confined within the limits of the sexual libido, is the authority of Professor Freud and his devoted disciples. I, for one, shall continue to try to avoid the spell of the primal horde-father and to use what intellect I have, untrammelled by arbitrary limitations.23
Alfred Hoche: To top it all, the [Freudians’] dogmatic arrogance leads them to compare Freud’s role with the historical position of Kepler, Copernicus and Semmelweis, and are compelled, according to a comical reasoning, to find the proof in the fact that they all had to battle the resistance of their contemporaries.24
Wilhelm Weygandt: Freud’s teaching has been compared with the puerperal fever theory of Semmelweiss, which was initially ridiculed and then brilliantly recognised. If we certainly also revolt against this, it would still be cruel to compare Freud with Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy. It is perhaps closer to think of Franz Joseph Gall, whose theories, despite some striking points of view and findings, fell into rejection immediately due to their uncritical exaggeration and utilisation, including good and bad components.25
Freud: I was either compared to Columbus, Darwin and Kepler, or abused as a general paralytic.26
Adolf Wohlgemuth: Freud–Darwin! You may as well couple the name of Mr. Potts, of the Eatonswill Gazette, with that of Shakespeare or Goethe . . . Both Copernicus’ and Darwin’s work was violently attacked and herein may be some resemblance to Freud’s, but yet what a sea of difference! Who were the attackers of Copernicus and Darwin? The Church, whose vested interests were endangered. Astronomers, as far as they dared in those dark days and were not Church dignitaries, or teachers at clerical universities, received the work of Copernicus and his successors with admiration. Biologists and geologists were almost unanimously enthusiastic about Darwin’s work. The chief objectors . . . to Freud’s theories, I say, are psychologists vom Fach [professional psychologists], that is exactly those people who stand to Freud’s work in the same relation as the astronomers to Copernicus, and the biologists and geologists to Darwin’s work, and who hailed it with joy and admiration.27
‘Make the past into a tabula rasa’, chanted the French revolutionaries. It is in the nature of revolutions to do away with opponents, whether it be with the swipe of the guillotine or with epistemic breaks, and to rewrite history from the moment of ‘year 1’ of the new scientific or political order. Freud’s parable of the ‘three blows’ provides a marvellous illustration of this purging of history, right down to its transcription. Indeed, this edifying story has its own interesting genealogy, which is passed over in silence by Freud. As Paul-Laurent Assoun has shown in his Introduction to Freudian Epistemology,30 before being taken up by psychologists, the comparison of humiliations produced by the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions comes from the well-known Darwinian propagandist Ernst Haeckel, who popularised it in several of his works.Freud: Neither speculative philosophy, nor descriptive psychology, nor what is called experimental psychology . . . as they are taught in our Universities, is in a position to tell you anything serviceable of the relation between the body and the mind or to provide you with the key to an understanding of possible disturbances of the mental functions.28
Freud: The theory of psychic life could not be developed, because it was inhibited by a single essential misunderstanding. What does it comprise to-day, as it is taught at college? Apart from those valuable discoveries in the physiology of the senses, a number of classifications and definitions of our mental processes which, thanks to linguistic usage, have become the common property of every educated person. That is clearly not enough to give a view of our psychic life.29
This ‘genealogical schema’ (Assoun) appears to have circulated freely in scientific circles, to the point where it was taken up without attribution by Thomas Huxley,34 and by the physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond in a talk given in 1883 under the title ‘Darwin and Copernicus’. This talk caused a sensation, and immediately made Du Bois-Reymond one of the favourite targets of the anti-Darwinians.Ernst Haeckel: The two great fundamental errors are asserted in [the Mosaic hypothesis of creation], namely, first, the geocentric error that the earth is the fixed central point of the whole universe, round which the sun, moon, and stars move; and secondly the anthropocentric error, that man is the premeditated aim of the creation of the earth, for whose service alone the rest of nature is said to have been created. The former of these errors was demolished by Copernicus’ System of the Universe in the beginning of the 16th century, the latter by Lamarck’s Doctrine of Descent in the beginning of the 19th century.31
Haeckel: Just as the geocentric conception of the universe – namely, the false opinion that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that all its other portions revolved around the earth – was overthrown by the system of the universe established by Copernicus and his followers, so the anthropocentric conception of the universe – the vain delusion that Man is the centre of terrestrial nature, and that its whole aim is merely to serve him – is overthrown by the application (attempted long since by Lamarck) of the theory of descent to Man.32
Haeckel: In the same way that Copernicus (1543) gave the mortal blow to the geocentric dogma founded on the Bible, Darwin (1859) did the same to the anthropocentric dogma intimately connected to the first.33
Haeckel did not appreciate his position being usurped in such a manner.Emil Du Bois-Reymond: Hardly had I been presented by Haeckel as an adversary of Darwin, I suddenly passed in the eyes of the reactionary organs and the clerics as the most distinguished defender in Germany of the Darwinian doctrine and they formed a circle around me to throw at me rantings full of furious hatred.35
Seeing Haeckel’s sensitivity to questions of intellectual priority, it is not difficult to imagine what would have been his response to Freud’s lecture. The latter did not content himself, like Huxley or Du Bois-Reymond, with comparing Darwin to Copernicus. He took over the reasoning and even the terms of Haeckel, simply adding a third stage, which Flournoy had already done before him: after the critique of geocentrism, of anthropocentrism, that of egocentrism – with no mention of Haeckel or Flournoy, both of whom he read. Even within psychoanalysis, some were struck by the audacity of Freud’s claims.Haeckel: Fifteen years ago I myself developed the comparison of Darwin and Copernicus, and showed the merit of these two heroes who had destroyed anthropocentricism and geocentrism, in my lecture, Über die Entstehung und den Stammbaum des Menschengeschlechts [On the development and family tree of the human race].36
Haeckel: Darwin became the Copernicus of the organic world, just as I had already expressed in 1868, and as E. Du Bois-Reymond did fifteen years later, repeating my statement.37
Here we see a commonplace presented as an ‘interesting idea’ which had simply occurred to Freud, who elides the history of this analogy. The manner in which these debates have been forgotten, leaving Freud as the sole claimant to the prize, is emblematic of the effects of the Freudian legend.Karl Abraham to Freud, 18 March 1917: The other paper, which you sent me in proof [‘A difficulty in the path of psycho-analysis’ in which Freud took up the theme of the three blows] gave me special pleasure, not only because of its train of thought but particularly as a personal document . . . Judging from the most recent paper, you might after all be tempted to come to this furthest north-eastern corner of Germany, if I tell you that your colleague Copernicus lived in Allenstein for many years.38
Freud to Abraham, 25 March 1917: You are right to point out that the enumeration in my last paper is bound to create the impression that I claim my place alongside Copernicus and Darwin. However, I did not want to relinquish an interesting idea just because of that semblance, and therefore at any rate put Schopenhauer in the foreground.39
The Lancet, 11 June 1938: His [Freud’s] teachings have in their time aroused controversy more acute and antagonism more bitter than any since the days of Darwin. Now, in his old age, there are few psychologists of any school who do not admit their debt to him. Some of the conceptions he formulated clearly for the first time have crept into current philosophy against the stream of wilful incredulity which he himself recognised as man’s natural reaction to unbearable truth.40