MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Sigmund Freud And William C. Bullitt

Summary of the key points of this enlightening book::

Early Life and Influences

• Father’s Influence: Wilson’s father, Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson, profoundly shaped his character. Wilson’s intense admiration and love for his father led to a strong desire for achievement and recognition.

• Psychological Mechanisms: The study explores Wilson’s use of repression, identification, and sublimation to manage his conflicting desires, particularly his aggressive and passive feelings towards his father.

Adolescence and Identification

• Increased Masculinity: During adolescence, Wilson’s masculinity increased, intensifying his aggressive feelings towards his father.

• Identification with Gladstone: Wilson admired British statesman William Gladstone, seeing him as an “incomparable father” figure. This identification helped him express his aggression towards his real father while maintaining love for him.

Adulthood and Career

• Struggles and Ambitions: Wilson faced physical ailments and frequent nervous breakdowns, often linked to unresolved inner conflicts. His ambition to become a statesman was influenced by his admiration for figures like Gladstone and Bright.

• Marriage and Stability: His marriage to Ellen Axson provided emotional stability and support, acting as a mother representative.

Presidency of Princeton

• Reforms and Conflicts: As President of Princeton, Wilson implemented significant reforms but faced intense conflicts, particularly with Dean Andrew F. West. These conflicts were driven by his repressed hostility towards his father.

• Impact of Father’s Death: The death of his father necessitated new outlets for his libido, leading to increased speech-making, passionate friendships, and religious activities.

Political Career and Presidency

• Legislative Achievements: Wilson’s political career saw significant legislative achievements, driven by his powerful Super-Ego and sense of divine mission.

• World War I: Wilson’s approach to World War I was shaped by his personal beliefs and psychological conflicts. He struggled to balance his desire for peace with the aggressive actions of Germany.

Psychological Struggles and Health

• Health Issues: Throughout his life, Wilson’s health issues, including neuritis, indigestion, and headaches, were closely linked to his psychological state.

• Key Relationships: His relationships with key figures, such as Colonel House and Joe Tumulty, provided both support and additional sources of conflict.

Peace Negotiations and Legacy

• Treaty of Versailles: Wilson’s efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace were challenged by the demands of the Allies. His compromises led to a treaty that many viewed as unjust.

• Decline and Death: Wilson’s health deteriorated significantly during his second term, culminating in a severe stroke in October 1919. His final years were marked by a sense of betrayal and a focus on his earlier achievements at Princeton.

Overall, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of Wilson’s character, emphasizing the interplay between his unconscious desires, psychoanalytic mechanisms, and the external influences that shaped his life and career.

Houghton Mifflin Company Boston. The Riverside Press. Cambridge. 1966. 317p.

By Christopher Badcock

From the Preface: “'If my father were alive today, I don't think he would want to be a psychoanalyst.' This remark was made to me more than once by Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter and successor in psychoanalysis, in the year or two before her death in 1982. When on one occasion I asked her what she thought her father would want to be if he were alive today, she was less sure. However, that he would not wish to be a psychoanalyst she was adamant.

This, and other similar remarks by Anna Freud, greatly increased my uncertainty about what I wanted to be when the analysis I had been undergoing withher was abruptly terminated by her death. It had begun in 1979, at a time when she was wel past the maximum age at which the analvtic professionwill allow an analyst to begin an official training analvsis with a student. As a result, I faced the prospect of starting more or less at the beginning if I wished to qualify as a psychoanalyst, and of course with a new training analyst.

London. HarperCollins Publishers. 1995. 218p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Philip Rieff

From the Preface: "The Emergence of Psychological Man" was written as a coda to The Mind of the Moralist, it is often assigned to students and read separately now from the main body of the text. I have thought ti important to amplify the concept of psychological manfor a reason stated most succinctly by two historians in their appraisal of my work and its implications. "If the dominant character type of the twentieth century is really what Riff calls 'psychological man,' the consequences for western society are quite incalculable." As a calculus of the incalculable, The Triumph of the Therapeutic is more than amplification of what has gone before; it signifies a beginning as wel as an end. I have tried to say something about the consequences of psychological man for Western society-but not everything, for I do not consider the advance of the social sciences toward a theory of culture yet sure enough to convey such an attempt….

NY. Harper & Row. 1966. 282p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Sigmund Freud

Authorizad Translation by James Strachey. From the cover: Freud's autobiography was originally published in America in 1927, and was therefore known to v er y few English readers. He completely revised and elaborated it for the English edition. It is of the highest interest, not only as the record of the personal life of the founder of psycho-analysis, but also because of the light which it throws on the development of the psycho-analytic movement.

London The Hogarth Press, 42 William Iv St., Wc2 And The Institute Of Psycho-Analysis. 1950. 134p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Paul Roazen

From the Preface: Since the themes within this book tend to move in several directions at the same time, a few prefatory remarks might help the reader keep the general argument in focus. The title of the book combines those intellectual traditions in which I have grown up. By "Freud" I am referring to his own writings and those of the psychiatric community which can be traced directly to his inspiration. I cannot claim to have examined comprehensively all the new developments in the psychiatry of our time. It is my conviction, however, that the ideas of Freud and his pupils, and what they have to contribute toour understanding of human nature, are important enough in intellectual history to justify treatment as a self-sufficient unit. "Political and Social Thought" in academic life has come to mean a grab bag of moral and legal ideas, in addition to more strictly social and political concepts; it also has a heritage, however, of the most re- spected kind, which begins with the philosophic activities of Plato and Aristotle, and which has over the centuries tried to relate human needs to social life.

Alfred A Knopf. New York. 1968. 342p.

By Ernest Jones

Edited and Abridged by Lionel Trilling and Steven Marcus. From the cover: Here now is Jones's Freud, edited and abridged in a single volume. To accomplish it, the editors have deleted those portions of the original trilogy which dealt principally with the technical as- pects of Freud's work. The result is a new classic for the general reader. Freud's childhood and adolescence; the excitement and trials of his four-year engagement to Martha Bernays, as re- vealed in their love letters; his carly ex- periments with hypnotism and cocaine; the incredible freeing of his creative powers through self-analysis; the slow rise of his reputation and the constant battles against distortion and personal slander; the painful defections of some of his close associates; the years of interna- tional eminence; the onset of the cancer from which he suffered for sixteen years; his seizure by the Gestapo in Nazified Austria; his stoicism in the face of an agonizing death- all this is unfolded ni a book that remains, in the words of The New York Times, "one of the outstanding biographies of the age," and which now emerges as more readable, more affecting, more inspiring than before.

NY. Basic Books. 1957. 565p.

By Philip Rieff.

There is nothing flat about Freud’s own self-portrait, as given informally in his letters. Told from the inside, Freud’s life takes on depth, even heroic proportion, not because of the external pace of events, which is in fact steady, but, rather, because of the heavy burden of knowingness about life that Freud carried from the beginning, on his back, as it were. Yet he never bent over in defeat; difficult as he found the task, he forced himself to remain emotionally and morally upright to the last, “defiant” of his corrupting knowl­edge — although as he himself admitted, in a letter splendid with modesty, he did not know quite why he thus main­tained his integrity. All he knew, at the end of his life, was that, as a moral man, he could not be otherwise.

Garden City, New York. Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1959. 455p. CONTAINS MARK-UP