Freud is a protean figure and can be approached in a number of ways. We are going to approach him through what was not only a central theme in his thinking, but through what became a central theme in his life.
With regard to his thinking, when he was too ill to attend the last Congress of the International Psychoanalytic in Europe before the Second World War, Freud sent his daughter, Anna, to read a text praising the vale of Spirituality over Sensuality -the value of mastering the instincts – to his followers who were gathered in Paris. This was his final testament.
And with regard to his life, he chose to die in freedom and on his own terms when he had his physician inject him with a lethal dose of morphine when his cancer-ridden-life no longer made sense to him. That was the way he mastered fate. We are not, however, going to take the value of self-mastery on face value. Freud was not sufficiently open to the charge, voiced by many critics of psychoanalysis, that the prices of this sort of self-mastery is too high. It may be the case, they argue, that too much instinctual gratification is sacrificed with a stance that puts such a one-sided emphasis on mastery, thus diminishing the prospects for happiness in life. We will examine these criticisms as we proceed.
