This paper analyzes what Sigmund Freud was trying to do both as an an analyst and as a writer in his autobiography of 1925. It describes Freud's compositional ratio, fantasies in writing about psychoanalysis, early life, the Freudian clinic, the Freudian subject, and concludes that reading Freud is still the best way to learn psychoanalysis. Shiva Kumar Srinivasan has a Ph.D. in literature and psychoanalysis from the University of Wales at Cardiff, UK (1996).

1. 1
LIVES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS
ON SIGMUND FREUD’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Sigmund Freud (1925, 1993). ‘An Autobiographical Study,’ Historical and Expository
Works on Psychoanalysis, translated by James Strachey, edited by Albert Dickson
(London: Penguin Books), Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 15, pp. 183-259.
INTRODUCTION
What does it mean for an analyst to write an autobiography? The lives of psychoanalysts
are not eventful; they are spent listening to patients who recount their woes and
struggles in life. So what exactly will or should an analyst describe? How should an
analyst position himself? In this case, there is a lot to describe since Sigmund Freud
invented psychoanalysis more or less on his own. Freud however does not describe
the history of the psychoanalytic movement in this study; he describes it elsewhere
in this volume of ‘historical and expository works on psychoanalysis.’1 This
autobiographical study, for instance, focuses only on the core precepts of psychoanalysis.
It would however be a good idea if the reader were to go through this study, along
with those included in this fifteenth volume of the Penguin Freud Library, to get a
more comprehensive understanding of how psychoanalysis came about as both a
clinical practice and as a cultural entity. As Freud points out, the history of
psychoanalysis is interwoven with his own life; it began with his self-analysis;
progressed in the analysis of his patients; and is known to us mainly because of the
theories that justify it as a clinical practice. It is to these events in the history of
medicine then that Freud will devote the better part of his attention in this text. It
might seem odd that an analyst who spent all his life listening to his patients might
be reluctant to talk about his own, but that is not really the case. There are
1 See, for instance, Sigmund Freud (1914, 1993). ‘On the History of the Psychoanalytic
Movement,’ Historical and Expository Works on Psychoanalysis, translated by James Strachey,
edited by Albert Dickson (London: Penguin Books), Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 15, pp. 57-
128.

2. 2
innumerable references to significant events in Freud’s life in his collected works –
especially in his ‘interpretation of dreams’ where he draws freely upon his own
dreams as well as those of others.2 What is really at stake in this autobiographical
study however are not external events in the conventional sense, but ‘events’ insofar
as they are relevant to forging a theory of the mind. That is perhaps why analysts
have not taken to writing their own lives in large numbers though the lack of
‘events’ in their lives has not stopped biographers from doing the needful3 (albeit
under the aegis of terms like ‘interiority, the inner life, and subjectivity).’4 In other
words, the generic attributes of an autobiographical study by an analyst will vary
significantly from the norm. If we take autobiographical studies like this seriously,
we will have to rethink the main purpose of an autobiography. That is because every
autobiography is a form of self-analysis; the existence of psychoanalysis as a form of
clinical intervention presupposes that a self-analysis is not only bound to be
incomplete but inadequate from a therapeutic point of view. This is the paradox of
psychoanalysis since Freud was himself never clinically analysed, but seems to have
analysed himself well enough to realize the theoretical limitations of self-analysis.
FREUD’S WRITING STRATEGY
What might an effective writing strategy be for an auto biographer who has lived an
uneventful life? The main events that constitute the life of thinkers usually tend to be
the creation of theories or the publication of books. That is why Freud’s 19th century
contemporaries, Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche, write about the books that
they have already written as a writing strategy in their autobiographical studies. It is
interesting that Sigmund Freud does not take this approach. While he mentions his
important books on psychoanalysis, he does not dwell on them (like Nietzsche is
fond of doing). With Nietzsche, the reader gets the impression that there is an
overwhelming temptation to review his own books. It is almost as though Nietzsche
were subtly pulling up his reviewers for not being up to the job of reviewing a writer
of his stature. Freud however chooses to focus on the ideas that go into the making
of psychoanalysis rather than review the core texts that constitute Freudian meta-
2 Sigmund Freud (1900, 1991). The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by James Strachey,
edited by Angela Richards (London: Penguin Books), Penguin Freud Books, Vol. 4. See also
John Forrester’s ‘Introduction’ to Sigmund Freud (1900, 2006). Interpreting Dreams, translated
by J. A. Underwood (London Penguin Books), pp. vii-liv.
3 See, for instance, the celebrated three volume biography of Sigmund Freud by his disciple,
Ernest Jones (1953-57). The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books).
4 For a brief history of the term ‘subjectivity,’ see Donald E. Hall (2004). Subjectivity (New
York: Routledge), the New Critical Idiom Series.

3. 3
psychology.5 It is important to remember this at the outset. While we insist on
recognizing Freud as a great writer in both German and in innumerable translations,
he sometimes seems content to merely get his analytic precepts right.6 Readers who
do not appreciate the significance of this point should read Darwin and Nietzsche to
understand the difference. Darwin takes a rather tidy approach (given the enormity
of data that constitutes the study of natural history and evolutionary biology) by
classifying his own work in terms of publications. While Darwin’s publications are
an attempt to classify natural phenomena, his autobiography is an attempt to
subsume these natural phenomena into textual events that can be situated as
chronological events in his life.7 Why is it then that Freud exhibits a more direct
approach to the analytic precepts of his doctrine as opposed to thinking of them as
textual representations? Is it that Freud was less ambitious as a writer than Darwin
and Nietzsche?8 Or, is it rather the case that contemporary literary critics expect a lot
more of Freud’s style, compositional modes, and forms of historical subjectivity than
is justified by his own need to think like a medical practitioner?9
5 These texts can be found in Sigmund Freud (1991). On Metapsychology: The Theory of
Psychoanalysis, translated by James Strachey, edited by Angela Richards (London: Penguin
Books), Vol. 11, The Penguin Freud Library.
6 See, for instance, Andrew Benjamin (1989). ‘Psychoanalysis and Translation,’ Translation
and the Nature of Philosophy:A New Theory of Words (London and New York: Routledge), pp.
109-149 and Darius Gray Ornston, Jr. (1992). Translating Freud (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press).
7 These textual events, needless to say, are Charles Darwin (1839,1989). Voyage of the Beagle,
edited by Janet Browne and Michael Neve (London: Penguin Books) and Charles Darwin
(1859, 1999). The Origin of Species (New York and London: Bantam Books).
8 See Charles Darwin (2002). Autobiographies, edited by Michael Neve and Sharon Messenger
(London: Penguin Books) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1992). Ecce Homo, translated by R.J.
Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books).
9 See, for instance, the papers edited in volumes such as John Lechte (1996). Writing in
Psychoanalysis: A Reader (London and New York: Arnold). The endemic ‘agon’ or power
struggle between literature and psychoanalysis is best exemplified in Harold Bloom (1994).
‘Freud: A Shakespearean Reading,’ The Western Canon: The Booksand School of the Ages (New
York: Riverhead Books), pp. 345-366. For Harold Bloom, it is William Shakespeare and not
Sigmund Freud who is at the centre of the literary canon; therefore, it is more important to
know what Shakespeare has to teach us about Freud than what Freud has to teach us about
Shakespeare. Meredith Anne Skura has raised important questions on the relationship
between literary criticism and forms of subjectivity within the context of historicism. So, for
instance, can psychoanalysis only be applied to those still alive and free-associating on the
couch in a clinical situation? Or, can it be applied to interpret the unconscious of those who
are dead in historical time, but represented as ‘literary characters’ or ‘historical figures’ in
canonical texts? See Meredith Anne Skura (1995). ‘Understanding the Living and Talking to

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FREUD’S COMPOSITIONAL RATIO
Those who take the textual dimensions of psychoanalytic studies seriously should
think through Freud’s own fantasies of writing ‘about’ psychoanalysis. It is important to
remember that the term ‘autobiography’ is probably a misnomer in this context; the
editors of this book suggest that a more accurate term is ‘self-portrayal’ since this
text was first published in a series in which medical scientists described the role
played by them in recent medical history. The distinction then between an
autobiography and self-portrayal helps explains to some extent why Freud doesn’t
demonstrate too much concern with the textual dimensions of this text even as
literary critics agonize about his style. Another concern in terms of the compositional
structure, for Freud, was how much information he should incorporate about his life
in this text as opposed to explaining the precepts of analysis. This compositional
ratio was important because this might be the only analytic text that the lay reader
might go through. It was therefore important not to bore the reader with too many
details of Freud’s life since these details will matter only if Freud is able to induce
some desire in the reader to learn more about psychoanalysis. If the choice was
between getting the reader interested in his life or in his thought, it was more
important for Freud to sell the precepts and practice of analysis in the first instance.
If he could interest the reader in the precepts of analysis, then, by definition the
reader will develop an interest in his life as well. In other words, the reader will have
a positive transference to psychoanalysis. These then are the preliminary thoughts
that Freud has about the compositional approach that would be adequate to the task
that he sets himself in this text. Another cause of concern was that Freud was
engaged in writing any number of historical and expository texts on different
aspects of psychoanalysis; he therefore wanted to ensure that there would be as little
repetition of subject matter amongst these texts as possible. Or, to put it simply,
Freud was aware of the generic strictures that he must keep in mind before coming
the Dead: The Historicity of Psychoanalysis,’ in Marshall Brown (ed.) The Uses of Literary
History (Durham and London: Duke University Press), pp. 93-105. The psychoanalytic
response to the question of historicity within the history of the subject is to deconstruct the
binary opposition between the living and the dead as empirical entities that exist in
historical time and represent the patient on the couch as ‘the living dead’ - this is an
important Lacanian formulation or technical term which means that the patient is currently
devoid of enjoyment; in other words, he is a ‘body minus jouissance.’ It is therefore incorrect
to assume, simply as the historicists do, that all those who are living are fully alive and that all
those who are dead simply do not exist anymore. For all those classified as ‘the living dead’ (be
they hysterics or obsessionals) in the analytic clinic, the unconscious emerges precisely in the
gap between life and death. This follows from the Freudian definition of ‘health’ as
comprising both the ability to love and to work; most patients can however express only object
libido or ego libido but not both. The relentless struggle to balance love and work in the
patient’s life necessarily involves an encounter with the unconscious.

5. 5
out with another account or outline of psychoanalysis.10 Freud’s compositional
approach or compositional ratio then is an attempt to individuate each of the
historical and expository texts that have been brought together in this volume of
papers. In other words, Freud positions himself and his texts as the best place to learn
psychoanalysis.
FREUD’S EARLY LIFE
Freud begins his autobiography with an account of a previous attempt to introduce
psychoanalysis at Clark University in the United States in 1909 before recounting the
bare details of his birth, education, and training in medicine. These details are
however situated within the fantasies that shaped his mind since he was more
interested in human nature than medical knowledge as an end in itself. The
significance of psychoanalysis, for him, was that it made precisely this form of
knowledge possible. Freud also describes his research in areas like neuroanatomy,
physiology, and histology and the materialistic model of medicine that he was
exposed to in the University of Vienna. Freud also names the medical practitioners
and medical researchers who had a significant influence on his way of thinking
before describing what he learnt under the tutelage of Jean-Martin Charcot at the
Salpêtrière in Paris. Charcot’s influence on Freud related mainly to his theories of
hysteria, the sexual aetiology of the neuroses, and the relationship between theories
and the empirical structure of medicine. Freud felt that Charcot was not willing to
explore deeper into the psychology of the neuroses even though he had the clinical
exposure necessary to do so. That however did not prevent Freud from making use
of Charcot’s insights when he returned to establish his own clinic in Vienna. On his
way back from Paris, Freud studied paediatric neurology in Berlin; he even
published monographs in this area. The main difficulty that Freud experienced
when he started clinical practice in Vienna was to establish the fact that hysteria can
afflict both men and women. This insight was met with resistance by the medical
community in Vienna who felt that since the word ‘hysteron’ meant the womb,
hysteria could affect only women. For long, it was thought that hysteria was caused
by a wondering womb; these medical superstitions were difficult to dislodge; Freud
therefore retreated into his clinic thinking that it was too early in his career to
attempt to do so.11
10 Sigmund Freud (1940). ‘An Outline of Psychoanalysis,’ Historical and Expository Works on
Psychoanalysis, translated by James Strachey, edited by Albert Dickson (London: Penguin
Books), Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 15, pp. 369-443.
11 Readers interested in this phase of Sigmund Freud’s career might want to look up Dianne
F. Sadoff (1998). Sciences of the Flesh: Representing Body and Subject in Psychoanalysis (Stanford:

6. 6
THE FREUDIAN CLINIC
Freud also describes the clinical techniques that he experimented with like
hypnotism and electrotherapy before deciding that ‘free-association’ was the
technique that would make psychoanalysis possible.12 These clinical techniques
initially attracted him not only because he wanted to remove painful symptoms but
to also find a way of exploring their origins. Not only are analysts interested in the
choice of the neurosis but also in the origins of the symptom. The clinical wager was
whether tracking the symptom back to its origins would make it disappear? Or,
whether additional considerations were required like discharging the affects
associated with the symptom or the core trauma to which they might be related.
These then are the clinical problems and techniques on which Freud had to make up
his mind before proceeding further with the clinical applications of psychoanalysis.
Freud has written extensively about these experiments elsewhere – especially in his
papers on technique – so he does not take up too much space here. He however
summarizes the main findings in his studies on hysteria; these relate to the sexual
aetiology of hysterical symptoms; the role of conversions into the somatic sphere in
hysterical contractures, paralyses, and symptoms; and the theory of catharsis. The
main theoretical task that Freud set himself in this phase was to delineate the
conditions of possibility of hysteria. What are the conditions that must be met before
a trauma can engender a full-blown hysteria? What would an acceptable definition
of hysteria be from a clinical point of view? Should traumas be defined from a sexual
point of view? Or would it suffice if they were described as a situation in which the
subject was overwhelmed by stimuli irrespective of whether the stimuli had a
libidinal basis to it? Freud was also asking these questions because war neuroses had
become an important problem for military psychiatrists during the First World War.
Soldiers returning from the battle front reported traumatic symptoms caused by
shell-shock. It was important for Freud to explore whether the model of causation in
the war neuroses could be reconciled with the sexual aetiology of the neuroses that
constituted what the clinical approach to hysteria seemed to demand.13
Stanford University Press) and Asti Hustvedt (2011). Medical Muses: Hysteria in 19th Century
Paris (London: Bloomsbury).
12 See Charles Rycroft (1968, 1995). ‘Free Association,’ A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
(London: Penguin Books), pp. 59-60.
13 See Laura Sokolowsky (2013). ‘The First Center for Psychoanalytic Consultation,’ We’re all
Mad Here, Culture/Clinic, Applied Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Vol. 1, edited by Jacques-Alain
Miller and Maire Jaanus (Minneapolis and London:University of Minnesota Press), pp. 169-
182.

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CLASSIFYING CLINICAL PHENOMENA
Freud was also interested in working out a classificatory schema for the ailments
that he was dealing with in his clinic. In addition to hysteria, he was confronted with
actual neuroses, psychoneuroses, neurasthenia, and obsessional neuroses. And,
finally, the clinical phenomenon that Freud put in a lot of effort to come to terms
with was transference love. In other words, the affective relation between the patient
and the analyst was to play a crucial role in whether the patient could be cured; and
in battling the varying levels of resistance that characterized the patient on his way
to recovery. The patient’s endemic resistance was to generate important insights
later within Freud’s theories of repression, masochism, the negative therapeutic
reaction, and the death instinct. Freud went on to correlate the levels of resistance
with proximity to the repressed in the unconscious; the theory of repression was to
become a crucial element in Freudian meta-psychology. This also meant that the
treatment ceased to revolve around cathartic phenomena. The discharge of affects
gave the patient a sense of relief but did not constitute a cure as such since the
underlying mental conflicts had to be still surfaced and worked-through. In order to
attain this level of intervention in his clinical work, Freud had to develop a new
model of the psychic apparatus and describe the unconscious as involving
‘descriptive, topographic, and dynamic’ aspects in his meta-psychology. Freud also
differentiates between whether neuroses are related to actual events and whether
they are mediated by fantasies. The shocking finding for Freud was that fantasies
can be as pathological as actual events that the subject is unable to work-through. In
fact, even actual events are not cognized directly but mediated by pre-existing
fantasies. It therefore became necessary to explore these fantasies in the Freudian
clinic. These fantasies are more real to the patient than even empirical reality. This
conclusion follows from the analytic precept that all neuroses will involve
withdrawing libido from empirical reality to the realm of fantasy. The patient can
reinvest this libido into worldly activities only at the end of analysis. If he does so in
the middle of an analysis, he will act out the conflicts that have started to surface in his
consciousness. That, to put it simply, is the occupational hazard for analysts who try
to make the unconscious conscious.
THE FREUDIAN SUBJECT
Freud also delineates his developmental model of the subject in terms of the oral,
anal, phallic, and genital stages. The main difference between the traditional
conception and the Freudian account is that each of these stages is mediated by the
existence of ‘quantitative variations’ in sexual energy that he terms the ‘libido.’
Progress through these stages without ‘fixation’ is required to produce a normative
subject; in cases of libidinal fixation relating to any of these stages the subject will
begin to exhibit attributes that characterise them. Subsequent regressions are more

8. 8
likely within a subject’s libidinal economy if the fixations cannot be overcome
through the subject’s strivings in the realms of love and work in everyday life. If the
subject falls ill later in life, his choice of neurosis is dictated by these prior fixations of
libido. Freud then relates his theory of the Oedipus complex to his model of diphasic
sexuality, the incest taboo, the theory of repression, and the advent of the latency
period. Another important point relates to the difference between the sexes and how
they relate to the question of phallic signification and the castration complex. Freud
also differentiates between inhibitions and the sublimation of the sexual instincts
into culturally valuable activities. And, finally, the Freudian clinic is dependent on
the model of free-association, the theory of the transference, and the interpretation of
dreams. Freud is therefore keen that the reader is able to absorb the importance that
he attaches to these aspects of analytic theory and practice. Freud’s theoretical
disagreements with Alfred Adler and Carl Jung were mainly related to the scope of
his libido theory. Adler and Jung argued that Freud’s libido theory was much wider
in scope than they wanted it to be and did not work with his model of the sexual
aetiology of the neuroses. Instead they wanted to de-libidinze the analytic model of
the subject, the clinic, and the transference in order to make it more acceptable in
bourgeois society. Freud however argued that he had important precursors like the
philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, for his theory of the
libido.14 Freud not only felt that his theory of the libido was misunderstood; he even
went on to develop a dualistic model of the subject as essentially split between the
life and death instincts. The aim of all life, for Freud, was to return to inanimate
matter; this was exemplified in his theory of the death instinct; there was an intrinsic
connection between sexuality and death which he believed must be the mainstay of
the analytic model of the subject. This proved to be even more controversial than his
libido theory. The subsequent history of psychoanalysis can be divided into those
who accept or dissent from his theory of the death instinct and its relationship with
the sexual instincts. The Kleinians and the Lacanians were amongst those who tried
to incorporate the death instinct within their own meta-psychology; Lacan, for
instance, deconstructs the sexual instinct into component drives and argues that the
sexual instinct does not exist in the form envisaged by biologists in the ‘speaking
subject.’ Freud also developed what is now known as ‘ego-psychology.’ This
approach is based on his structural model of ‘id, ego, and super-ego’ and was
developed by his daughter Anna Freud at the British Society and by the American
14 The main reason that Freud did not hold forth on the theories of Arthur Schopenhauer
and Friedrich Nietzsche though their themes prefigure those of psychoanalysis is because
they exerted too strong an ‘anxiety of influence’ on him; they were precursors whom he had
to work-through without being flooded by their texts. For more on this theme in the history
of literature, see Harold Bloom (1973, 1997). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press), passim.

9. 9
school of ego-psychology led by Rudolf Loewenstein, Ernst Kris, and Heinz
Hartmann.15 Further splits in the analytic movement were a consequence of the
Kleinians and Lacanians arguing that the growth of ego-psychology is itself based on
a repression of Freudian insights on the structure of the unconscious, the imaginary
structure of the ego, the death instinct, and on fundamental assumptions on what
constitutes, if any, an acceptable definition of reason and rationality within the
Freudian model of the subject. The main Lacanian thrust against ego-psychology is
that it is susceptible to the ‘lure’ of the imaginary.16
CONCLUSION
It is interesting to note in the context of studying Freud’s autobiography that both
orthodox and dissenting forms of analysis begin as conflicting impulses in the
Freudian doctrine. That is why it is important to read the Freudian text in ways that
characterise literary criticism which revels in such paradoxes rather than wish them
away as theoretical inconsistencies or as Freud’s personal inadequacies. Freud
concludes his text by differentiating between the neuroses and psychoses and
considers whether psychoanalysis is applicable in the context of the latter. Freud did
not have the final word on this since the relationship between psychoanalysis and
psychiatry is yet to be decided. He was also interested in the diffusion of the analytic
doctrine in different parts of the world and considered whether the forms of
resistance that it had to overcome have any symptomatic resonance. Freud is
particularly keen to see his insights applied in comparative anthropology, education,
and literature. Freud argues that analytic insights will help us to understand the
thought processes of artists and writers though it will not necessarily be able to
account for the structure of aesthetic form as such. It will also be of use in raising
children.17 The socio-cultural applications of analytic insights excited Freud mainly
because, as he puts it, his ‘interest, after making a lifelong détour through the natural
sciences, medicine and psychotherapy’ had ‘returned to the cultural problems’ that
‘fascinated’ him when he was ‘scarcely old enough for thinking.’
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN
15 See, for instance, Joseph Schwartz (1999). Cassandra’s Daughter: A History of Psychoanalysis
(New York: Penguin Books).
16 For more on these resonant themes in Freudian meta-psychology and the history of
psychoanalysis, see Richard Boothby (2001). Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology after Lacan
(New York and London: Routledge) and Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan (1983).
Interpreting Lacan, Vol. 6 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).
17 An important book in this genre is Donald W. Winnicott (1993). Talking to Parents
(Cambridge: Perseus Publishing) with an introduction by the paediatrician T. Berry
Brazelton.