Saving Freud by Andrew Nagorski

Author:Andrew Nagorski [Nagorski, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785788789
Publisher: Icon
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

As cooperative a patient as Freud wanted to be, he had one serious addiction that he had repeatedly tried and failed to conquer: his smoking. As Schur noted, “I could recognize immediately that this was an area where, as Freud himself had realized, he could not establish ‘the dominance of the ego.’” It wasn’t a question of refusing to admit the dangers of smoking: Freud believed that his early cardiac problems were, at least in part, a result of that habit. And the surgeries on his jaw served as painful reminders of the escalating price he was paying for it. But he still resisted the notion that he could live—and, especially, work—without his beloved cigars.

On February 12, 1929, shortly after Schur took on the job of serving as his personal doctor, Freud responded to a questionnaire by providing a summary of his smoking history. “I began smoking at the age of 24, first cigarettes but soon exclusively cigars, and am still smoking now (at 72½), and very reluctant to give up this pleasure,” he wrote. When he was in his thirties, he gave up smoking for more than a year because of his heart problems, he reported, although he concluded that the lingering effects of influenza might have contributed to them. “Since then, I have been faithful to my habit or vice, and believe that I owe to the cigar a great intensification of my capacity to work and a facilitation of my self-control.” He added: “My model for this was my father, who was a heavy smoker and remained one till his 81 year”—the year of his death.

To a succession of friends and physicians, he argued that smoking was essential to his productivity. “It was Freud’s contention, based on his own experience, which I could later only confirm, that he needed nicotine during periods of creative writing or the preparation for such activity,” Schur reported. “And when was Freud not at such a stage?” In other words, he always needed to smoke because he was always working.

In Freud’s view, masturbation was the “primary addiction,” and the “other addictions, for alcohol, morphine, tobacco, etc., enter into life only as a substitute for and a withdrawal [symptom] from it.” This insight into the connection between the primary and subsequent addictions did not help him break his smoking habit.

In going through his medical records, Schur came across the reports by the pathologist who examined the excisions from his mouth during successive operations and minced no words on the cause of his problems. “Specially noticeable this time is the widespread inflammation which covers the whole of the mucous membrane and is the consequence of excessive smoking,” he wrote in one of those reports.

But when Schur showed Freud such findings and the medical literature warning of the dangers of nicotine, he merely shrugged his shoulders. On one occasion, Freud even offered him a Havana cigar, which Schur felt obliged to accept and light up. Seeing that Schur was not a smoker and was not enjoying it, he remarked how expensive such fine cigars were—and never offered him another.

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