Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1940-09-05
Of Stars, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Field, Laboratory
And Study
BIZ Thomas r. Henri.

By Thomas r. Henry.
Dying among strangers in a strange
land, an old man in exile who had been
one Of the great brains Of his century
| labored to the end on his final prescrip-
| ton for brain-sick human race.
A few days after the declaration Of
war last September, Sigmund Freud died
in London, to which he had escaped with
his family from the wrath of an aveng-
ing Hitler. He left his final work I'M
| finished, a lot of rough manuscript.
| Collected and translated by some of his
English disciples, 1t has just been pub
lished in an obscure scientific journal,
the first copies of which have just been
received at the Army Medical Library
here. The last testament OF the man
who was the father of one of the great
revolutions in human thought has
escaped notice of all but few specialists.
During those last months in London
the thoughts of the physician philos-
opher dWelt much on death. He knew
his own end was near. He had Just
witnessed the death of his fatherland
with the conquest of Austria. Some of
his closest friends had persisted in the
Jewish prosecutions. Now he saw the
whole world on the edge of such a holi-
day of death as history had not known
before. He sought in his last days to
sift through the experience of his 80
years the philosophy he had propounded,
philosophy which was the basis of
new school of medicine which for the
first time had thrown light on the inner
mechanics of human behavior, and
which had made his home in Vienna
place of pilgrimage for physicians from
all over the earth. He sought not to
say anything new but to state with new
clarity exactly that element of his work
with which he wished to be credited by
posterity.
But in this last work what was before
an obscure note rises like the burden OF
dirge-the thesis of an all-consuming
Thanatos. the irresistible drive in AL
living things to return to the nom
living from which life has emerged
with futile defiance. That is the
instinct, Freud says, which he can under
stand. The opposing drive for racial
and individual survival, the libido OF the
psychoanalysts, no longer seems quite
rational to the old philosopher
He restates his theory of the id, the
primeval mind which underlies con-
seriousness and includes everything in
herited, everything present at the birth
of the individual, and everything fixed
in the individuals constitution. This i'd
includes all the instincts, all forms of
behavior which appear without being
learned. The entire i'd, Freud had
stressed before, can be divided into two
major components, two instincts which
include all the others. Both operate
below the level of consciousness.
One, on which Freud had placed
particular emphasis before, is Eros, or
the libido. 1t is the sum total of all
the instincts leading to the continual
ton of the species. The other is
Thanatos, or the death instinct. It is
present and perhaps dominant, he
believed at the end, in every living thing
from bacteria to man. Any instinct can
W 4OA A6CO, says, dS oil W
return to an earlier state, as a stretched
rubber band springs back to its original
shape.
Now, he says, life in the beginning
arose from something which was non
living. The living state can be con-
sidered as a distortion of the inorganic
state to which the molecules and COM
hinatinnS n
forever striving to return. Says Freud:
That state, whatever it may be that
living thing has reached, gives rise to
tendency to re-establish itself as soon
as it has been abandoned"
Thus a constant regressive pull is set
up to drag the living organism farther
and farther back towards the condition
that prevailed before life began, and
eventually with the individual 1t always
succeeds. All things die. On this basis,
the old philosopher says, he cannot
comprehend Eros, the love drive, which
in its various sublimationS becomes the
driving force of civilization as well as
the cause of many insanities.
But If the history of life were better
known, he says, it might not be antag-
onistic after all, on the thesis that all
life-stuf may once have been one mass
from which the various forms have
differentiated and the Eros drive may be
an effort to restore this primeval state,
the next step beyond which would be
all-encompassing death.
There can be no question, he says, OF
purpose in Eros and Thanatos. They
are the things out of which mind is
made but something else quite recent
in the history of life controls them,
although it was originally derived from
them. Now, Freud points out, this death
instinct involves a great deal of energy
which, thwarted In Its drive to destroy
the self is turned outward to the destruc-
ton of other living things The final
expression of this outward turning is
war, which enables one both to destroy
others and to destroy the self-to fulfill
the most unyielding desire of men and
nations-which is to die.
Beyond doubt, it is stressed in the
preface to this last testament, the Vienna
sages thoughts were turned more
strongly than ever before in this direc-
ton by the disturbed conditions in
Europe which preceded the outbreak of
war.