2006
just happened to be the 150th anniversary of
the birth of Sigmund Freud. Freud is one of
those guys that everybody has heard of, even
though few of us have ever read any of his
works. Phrases like "Freudian slip," and one
other one having to do with envy and the male
anatomy that I won't name so your internet
protector doesn't bounce me like a bad check,
are standard conversation--mostly joke fodder,
actually. It's been awhile since many
professionals took him seriously, and the
honor was probably never given up by the
general populace.
You
can kind of see why. I read some Freud back in
college, not because it was required of music
majors, but mostly because I get these weird
cravings once in a while, like for potato
chips at midnight, to get to know the actual
written words of the famous figures in history
who have left them behind, instead of simply
accepting how the late night talk show hosts
characterize them in their monologues. I go to
the source. And what I read from that source
was, well, pretty interesting. Mr. Freud
seemed to feel that men had earned their
superiority in the battle of the sexes because
of their ability to pee on fire, and that
mankind as a whole was beset by an eradicable
sense of guilt as the result of standing
upright--thereby exposing the genitals to
harm. He was, I recall, a bit overeager to
discuss genitalia in general. And, in an era
which boasted no shortage of Germanic male
academics who were sure of their superiority
and the superiority of their ideas (as well as
their sex), Freud was both. With lots to
spare.
But
it is one of the strange trademarks of history
that founders are often radical in the extreme
and that, after they have outraged the
establishment, stunned their envious colleges
with their success, and ultimately embarrassed
themselves for posterity with some of their
virtuoso thinking--the kind that once seemed a
product of rapier wit and now looks like it
was done with a rusty scalpel--that many come
after them who do what one man could never do
alone anyway. They engage the ideas, refine
the methods, and in Freud's case, found an
entire branch of human inquiry.
The very
idea that the way the human mind works in
tandem with its emotions and influences could
be studied, and that the results might not be
what we assumed we knew we owe largely to
Freud, although, admittedly, some of the best
parts of psychoanalysis seem to owe less about
peeing on fire and more to common sense. The
thought that the kid bullying you at school
might be acting out of insecurity and trying
instead to make a friend (very ineptly) was an
insight I gained from my mom. I don't think
she ever read Freud. Still, with so many of
his maxims now in the drinking water, you
never know if she would have read the
situation the same way if we had lived in the
1870s. Now we not only punish criminals, we
try to figure out ways we could stop them from
committing crimes in the first place. Salesmen
try to put potential customers at ease and
employers who bother to make employees happy
so that they will be productive. All of that
can probably be traced back in some way to the
idea that the state of a person's pysche made
a difference in their interactions with the
world, that it was to some extent knowable,
and maybe its workings at times less than
obvious. Freud shouldn't get complete credit
for this, but he did have a talent many of his
colleagues lacked, which was getting the most
attention for it.
This
is a bit more sophisticated than the
blame-your-mother-for-everything approach that
Freud is saddlebagged with in the popular
media these days. But it is that very idea
that one's drives and fears could be shaped in
the early years that brings me to why I wanted
to write about Freud.
Freud
popped up in my reading material last week. At
least, I'm pretty sure he was responsible. The
book was a biography of the composer Felix
Mendelssohn. I'm working on a piece of his and
my knowledge of him is scant, so I picked up a
short biography called The Life of
Mendelssohn by Peter Mercer-Taylor. It
dates from 2000 and not only does it reflect
pretty recent research, the author theorizes
that Mendelssohn may have had a problem with
his parents.
Mendelssohn
only lived to be 38 years old, which is pretty
sobering if you are about to turn 35. He
outlived Mozart by a year, but unlike Mozart,
Mendelssohn wasn't killed by a disease in
combination with alcoholism and mercury
poisoning (that's the theory on Mozart,
anyhow). Basically, Mendelssohn just worked
himself to death. He had a pretty weak
constitution. His father died young and was
subject to the same sorts of attacks that
plagued Felix. Evidently that didn't set off
alarm bells in the medical establishment in
those days.
What
also doesn't seem to have occurred to
Mendelssohn is what the author theorized about
him near the end of the book. The composer
basically lived like a whirlwind, taking all
manner of conducting engagements all over
Europe, traveling constantly, and getting more
and more depressed over the fact that he had
so little time for composition, which is what
he felt was his true calling. Eventually, an
exhausted Mendelssohn just wanted to cut back
on his engagements so he could rest and
recuperate. But, like some people I knew at
the conservatory, he kept saying he would do
it, but he never actually did. Instead, he
kept traveling, kept on conducting, until he
killed himself.
Now the reason for this
constant overwork is not documented. But Mr.
Mercer-Taylor believes it might have something
to do with the fact that his father was never
all that keen on having Felix become a
musician. Born into a rich family, with
private tutors in every subject and a wealth
of opportunities to be a success in any number
of chosen fields, his son chose one which has
always been financially precarious, and not
particularly respected in many instances. But
some years later Abraham was truly proud of
his son. It was when he saw him conducting,
commanding the respect and even the very
movements of a hundred men. Holding together a
large force by the strength of his own vision,
his own interpretation of the great musical
classics, responsible for such a mass of
collaborative sound. Abraham was never that
wild about any of the music his son wrote. But
to conduct? Now that was something to
be proud of.
Mendelssohn
kept believing that he needed to compose more.
But he kept leaving himself little time, and
when he did compose, his later works were
often hackneyed repetitions of what he had
written while younger, probably because of
haste and lack of sustained effort. So why
deny himself the very thing he claimed to want
most?
The
author's reason is simple: he wanted his
father's respect--even well after his father
died in 1835. Consciously or subconsciously
(another concept we owe to Freud) he needed to
please his father worse than he needed to
please himself. It elicited a high price.
If
someone had been able to figure this out in
the 1840s, and tell Felix Mendelssohn, would
it have changed things? It is all speculation.
Not that Freud would have been afraid of that.
But we live in a more careful time. Still, it
is not unreasonable to consider how our basic
psychological needs are shaped, and how they
can sometimes be a trap from which we can't
seem to escape. It is said that knowledge can
set you free. It is too late for Mendelssohn.
After all the speculation we are left with
history as it happened. But for the rest of
us, who knows?
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