Life Lessons From Freud by Brett Kahr

Author:Brett Kahr [Kahr, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447247005
Publisher: Macmillan

This patient bore many similarities to Goethe. Just as Johann Wolfgang had a brother, Hermann Jakob, who arrived some three years after his birth, Freud’s patient also had a brother three years his junior. And just as Goethe disposed of all his mother’s kitchenware, Freud’s patient also threw dishes out of the window during childhood. As Freud had discovered, this patient had tried to kill his baby brother, but did not succeed. Instead, the patient attempted to express his sibling hatred by first attacking defenceless animals. But no doubt some grown-up may have stopped him from doing so, and thus, Freud’s patient had to find another means of being aggressive; so he, like Goethe, turned to the crockery cupboard:

The opinion might thus be formed that the throwing of crockery out of the window was a symbolic action, or, to put it more correctly, a magic action, by which the child (Goethe as well as my patient) gave violent expression to his wish to get rid of a disturbing intruder. There is no need to dispute a child’s enjoyment of smashing things; if an action is pleasurable in itself, that is not a hindrance but rather an inducement to repeat it in obedience to other purposes as well. It is unlikely, however, that it could have been the pleasure in the crash and the breaking which ensured the childish prank a lasting place in adult memory.

(‘A Childhood Recollection from Dichtung und Wahrheit’, 1917)

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