Who was Wilhelm Stekel?

Francis Clark-Lowes has reconstructed Wilhelm Stekel’s life and work, and has thereby shone a light on an aspect of psychoanalytical history.

A time-honoured question runs: How do I know when I perceive something that I’m not dreaming?

In his Meditations on First Philosophy René Descartes gave this answer: “It is manifestly impossible to doubt [...] that I hold in my hand this piece of paper. But how could I deny that I possess these hands and this body, and withal escape being classed with persons in a state of insanity, whose brains are so disordered [...] as to cause them pertinaciously to assert that they are monarchs when they are in greatest poverty.” However, he then immediately lays another obstacle in the way of healthy human understanding. “Though this be true [...] I must nevertheless here consider that I am a man, and that, consequently, I am in the habit of sleeping and representing to myself in dreams those same things, or even sometimes others less probable [...] [A]ttentively considering these cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep.”

Karl Philipp Moritz took this objection seriously, and concluded in his Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde (1786, Journal of Experiential Psychology) that the scholar should make dreams the object of his considerations precisely because he “is attempting to glance into the pathways of both fantasy and well-ordered thinking in their most remote recesses.” Sigmund Freud followed in turn this cue, which led him into a devil’s brew. He found here all the ingredients for the cuisine which, on waking, is served up to common sense as meaningless dreams. With the help of free association Freud believed he could follow this cuisine back in such a way that he broke through the border between reason and dream, and thereby lay open the way that led from a healthy to a diseased mental life.

In the foreword to the third edition of the Interpretation of Dreams (1911) he remarks in this regard: “It was my hope that dream-interpretation would help to make possible the psychological analysis of neuroses.” In this prominent position Freud mentions in addition the name of a colleague who helped him to understand better “the extent and importance of symbolism in dreams (or rather in unconscious thinking),” that is Wilhelm Stekel. The latter had that same year published The Language of Dreams: A Presentation for Physicians and Psychologists of the Interpretation and Symbolism of the Dream in its Relationship to both the Sick and Healthy Mind (1911).

Who was Wilhelm Stekel? It had been at this man’s suggestion that the Wednesday Society, from which the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society later arose, was founded. In the autumn of 1902 the first meeting of this group took place, and was described by Stekel in a feature of the Prager Tagblatt [a German-language Prague newspaper – B.N.] under the title “Discussion on Smoking.” The names of the participants in this scientifically and historically interesting gathering are not given, but they are indicated by their character: “the master” was Sigmund Freud, “the socialist” was Alfred Adler, “the relaxed one” was Max Kahane, “the taciturn one” was Rudolf Reitler and by “the restless one” Stekel meant himself.

Stekel’s self-description was undoubtedly accurate, for his restless spirit brought forth not only specialist books and articles, but also numerous contributions to popular journals and newspapers, among them a review of The Interpretation of Dreams published in 1902 in the Neue Wiener Tagblatt [a leading Viennese newspaper at that time – B.N.]. This last pleased “the master” so well that he presented a copy of the book to “the restless one” with the dedication: “To Dr W. Stekel. With heartfelt thanks for his great service in gaining acknowledgement of my book.”

Stekel repaid Freud’s recognition of him in many ways. He was the most voluble propagandist of the new psychoanalytical science. “The printing presses of all the German newspapers groaned under the weight of his eulogies,” wrote Fritz Wittels. And indeed eulogistic he was. According to Stekel Freud was the “most important living researcher into dreams,” and in another place he wrote of the “great expert of the mind, Professor Sigmund Freud, who showed me this way, and to whom I owe the new light that has illuminated so much that had been shrouded in darkness.” Even in his autobiography, which he wrote at the end of his life, and which was only published after his death, he describes his relationship to “the master” thus: “I was Freud’s apostle, he was my Christ.”

As I have indicated, Freud praised Stekel’s dream book of 1911, but on the quiet, that is in private letters, he made fun of it. For example, he wrote to C.G. Jung about Stekel’s contribution: “[,..] the pig finds truffles.” Jung took up the metaphor and replied “[...] it would be a pity if we lost his olfactory organ.” After the second International Psychoanalytical Congress in Nuremberg in 1910, Freud and Jung were no longer so inclined to speak well of Stekel and Adler. For these two had prevented Jung from being elected to the post of life-long President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, as Freud had envisaged.

On the one hand this action brought Adler and Stekel the recognition of their colleagues, who shortly after the congress elected Adler to be Chairman and Stekel to be Vice-Chairman of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society; but on the other hand it also brought Freud’s enduring anger. In the letter just cited to Jung he wrote: “Naturally I’m lying in wait for the opportunity to get rid of both of them, but they know this and behave cautiously and in a conciliatory way, so that for the moment I can’t do anything. Of course I exercise a strong control, but they accept this as well. In my heart I’m finished with both of them.”

In March 1911, after a torturously long debate concerning Adler’s presentation on “Masculine Protest as the Core Problem of Neurosis,” it came at last to the crunch; Adler resigned in exasperation from the post of Chairman. In the Minutes this is recorded soberly as: “Prof. Freud is elected Chairman [...] by acclamation and immediately takes over the chairmanship.” Shortly after Adler leaves Freud’s circle for good. In a letter to Ernest Jones, Freud writes: “[...] as for the fundamental rift with Adler, it had to come, and I allowed the crisis to ripen.”

For the time being matters proceeded more cautiously in the case of Stekel. Freud granted him a temporary period of grace. In a letter to Jung in April 1911 he gave three reasons for this: “First because all in all he is a good-natured fellow and devoted to me, secondly because I am bound to put up with him as one does with an elderly cook who has been with the family for years, and thirdly and mainly because we have no way of knowing what he may discover and misrepresent if we rebuff him.”

The “old cook” had to put up with a number of humiliations over the following months. In April 1911 Stekel’s book, The Language of Dreams, was discussed in the Society. Freud addressed the group and was outspoken, as he told Jung. But Stekel, “[...] reacted as if he didn’t feel spat upon but had only felt a few drops of rain.” Viktor Tausk used the opportunity to spit along with Freud. In the Minutes we read that Tausk “singles out as symptomatic a small portion of the work – namely its preface – in order to analyse it from a textual-critical point of view and to criticise it from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge. Above all he demonstrates the existence of errors in the description of concepts [...]” And that was not the end of it by a long shot. A year later, in a letter to Ferenczi in May 1912, Freud describes the situation in the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society thus: “Before Whitsun there was [...] an ugly scene between Tausk, who is a vicious predator, and Stekel [...]”

Freud then sets the predator loose; he requires Stekel to hand over book reviewing in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse to Tausk. Stekel had been the technical editor of this journal since its foundation in 1910. All Stekel’s pleading proves in vain; Freud, the editor-in-chief of the journal, sticks to his decision. Thereupon Stekel seeks the support of the publisher, who assures him that if no agreement can be reached with the editor-in-chief, he will side with the technical editor. When Freud hears of this arrangement he feels himself betrayed by his “apostle.” He now wants to get rid of this Judas as quickly as possible.

However, unforeseen family complications arise. Freud’s seventy-seven year old mother, Amalie, is convalescing in Bad Ischl, where in the summer of 1912 Dr Stekel, whom the old lady knows as the friend of her eldest son, is also staying. She calls him to treat her because she is feeling unwell. Stekel uses all his psychosomatic knowledge to put the patient back on her feet. He considers that because Bad Ischl not only fails to provide her with the opportunity to play tarock, but also lacks sunshine, it would be better for her to move southwards. For this good advice and other medical services Stekel receives a postal order from Vienna to the value of 300 crowns. The sender is the younger son of the patient.

Stekel does not wish to keep the money, and so he writes to Alexander Freud: “I [...] never reckoned up the number of my visits to your mama. [...] In confidence [these words were subsequently underlined by a reader of this letter – B.N.] I’ll probably come to an arrangement with the brother [by whom he meant Sigmund Freud – B.N.]. He doesn’t appear to be capable of recognising and retaining [this word emphasised by the German convention of spaced out letters – B.N.] his true friends [Stekel means himself – B.N.]. Please don’t mention this to anyone [retrospectively underlined by a reader – B.N.]. We’ll talk about this more sometime. With many heartfelt greetings, your humble servant, Stekel.” Beside the underlined passages the word “pig” is twice written by hand in the margin. We have already encountered this epithet; Sigmund Freud used it in a letter to Jung.

The first meeting of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society after the summer break in 1912 took place on 9 October. In the Minutes we read that Stekel “is co-opted by the committee as the [technical – B.N.] editor of the Zentralblatt.” Shortly thereafter, however, Stekel, like Adler before him, gives up in a state of demoralisation. He leaves the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, but is now, as promised by the publisher, the new editor of the Zentralblatt. Freud then withdraws and founds the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse (the International Journal for Psychoanalysis). In his History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (1914) Freud pays tribute to Stekel and even thanks him again, this time, however, damning him with faint praise. Over the years, Freud relates, he has come to better understand the symbolism of dreams. “This was partly through the influence of the works of Stekel, who at first did such very creditable work but afterwards went totally astray.”

In the same essay Freud indicates that Adler and Jung had, following their separation from him, founded their own breakaway movements [Freud plays here with the German word Abfall which can mean both “breakaway” and “rubbish” – B.N.], but Stekel is never awarded even this doubtful honour. And yet Stekel did found his own school which in the twenties was called the Organisation of Independent Medical Analysts. This was, however, unable to survive National Socialist rule. Stekel emigrated to England in 1938 and committed suicide in 1940.

This said, what has survived of Stekel is his demand that psychoanalysts should not merely wait passively in sessions, but should actively intervene, and focus on the current conflict, while at the same time not losing sight of the patient’s life-history. The most commonly practised treatment associated today with the psychoanalytical school (deep-psychology based psychotherapy in its long or short form) follows from premises formulated by Stekel. One could thus rightfully honour him as a pioneer – had he not years ago been forgotten.

The conformist Freud biographies saw to that. Ernest Jones (1955) tells us, for example, that Stekel had “[...] a serious flaw in his character that rendered him unsuitable for work in an academic field: he had no scientific conscience at all.” Peter Gay (1987) also repeats this assertion, which had as its basis a statement by Freud that Stekel was “a ‘hopeless shameless’ liar.” Gay commented on this defamation in his own words: “For Freud with his pronounced moral principles such dishonesty made all further collegial work impossible.” As we will see shortly, this myth of Stekel, the liar, has a deeper cause. His works, if one were to remember them, might tarnish the reputation of “the master.”

In relevant psychoanalytic lexicons one generally finds no entry for Stekel, though there are entries for Adler and Jung, as for example in The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis. The literature on sexology has reacted differently, as in the case of the Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung edited by Volker Sigusch and Günter Grau (2009, Lexicon of Sexology). Here Stekel is still remembered as the author of a ten-volume work on disturbances of the impulses and emotions (Die Störungen des Trieb- und Affektlebens 1912-1928. The volumes appeared separately, without the series title, in English – B.N.) and as the publisher of Fortschritte der Sexualwissenschaft und Psychanalyse (sic, 1924-1931). And now at last a specialist on the early history of psychoanalysis has broken the spell and rehabilitated the man whom psychoanalytic literature has ignored or reviled.

In his excellent study, Freud’s Apostle: Wilhelm Stekel and the Early History of Psychoanalysis Francis Clark-Lowes offers a well-researched overview of all the contributions which Stekel made to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis . A bibliographical section, which comprises over a quarter of the book, lists these specialist publications as well as Stekel’s popularist articles published in far-flung places. The latter numbered over 550 in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The German reader can read all the citations from Freud’s and Stekel’s works in the original, the English translations being given in footnotes. And the e-book version, which purchasers of the printed version may obtain free by application to the publisher, can be used as an index of authors’ names and terms through the use of the “find” function.

Thus with the help of Clark-Lowes’ meticulously researched history, it is now for the first time possible to comprehend and evaluate in detail the dispute between Stekel and Freud, without depending upon second-hand summaries and prejudices. The book is therefore very much suited as the starting point for further research. From the wealth of possible themes I single out a few which might be particularly interesting for historians of psychoanalysis.

Stekel had addressed the opposition between the life and death drives long before Freud did so. In the Minutes of the Wednesday Society dated 24 April 1907 it appears thus: “The speaker [Stekel – B.N.] takes as his starting point the dream of a female patient in which there is a clear fusion of death and sexuality. A man appears in it who is Eros and Thanatos in one person. [...] There are no isolated instincts. The sexual instinct, for example, always appears accompanied by two instincts: the life instinct and the death instinct.” When Freud first speaks of the “death drive” thirteen years later in Beyond the Pleasure Principle he fails to mention Stekel even once.

Following this presentation by Stekel on “The Psychology and Pathology of Anxiety Neurosis” Freud remarked, according to the Minutes: “The problem of anxiety is the most delicate, central problem in the theory of neuroses.” At that time Freud considered sex hormones could become toxic when libido is built up by involuntary abstinence or when there is inadequate release of the libido through coitus interruptus and masturbation. Anxiety could, according to him, be the result of such disturbances of libido. This was the basis for Freud’s theory of the “actual neuroses,” that is neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis, which Stekel contradicted. The Minutes reproduce Stekel’s critique of Freud’s view as follows: “Freud has traced anxiety neurosis back to coitus interruptus: he sees the origin of anxiety in the deflection of somatic sexual excitement from the psychic sphere. Stekel stresses that, in contrast to this opinion, he must adhere to the conviction that also in anxiety neurosis – as in any other neurosis – the psychic sphere is essential.” Half a year before his resignation from the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society Stekel repeated his appraisal of Freud’s view. This time the Minutesrecord Stekel’s opinion thus: “Neurasthenia does not exist; behind it are hidden psychoneurotic symptoms.”

This controversy, however, concerned not just questions of nosology. It was about more, namely the question as to whether constant masturbation could be primarily damaging through being an inadequate form of sexual release, as Freud believed, or whether, as Stekel maintained, the damage was secondary, that is caused by the psychological conflict initiated by misguided education. This disagreement formed part of the so-called “masturbation debate” which took place in the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society between 1910 and 1912. Freud’s position was a modified form of the widespread nineteenth-century view that masturbation could lead to mental enfeeblement. The Minutes for the meeting on 7 February th1912 represent his view in this way: “The opinion that masturbation is harmful finds support in observations made by an absolutely objective critic who traced back the later stultification of Arab youth to their masturbation, which was excessive and totally uninhibited.”

Stekel contradicted this view and emphasised the feelings of shame and guilt which arose from the prohibition of masturbation. It was these which could lead to psychological disturbance. Freud seems to have hinted at a third possibility in a letter to Fritz Wittels in 1924, namely that the cause of excessive masturbation could be unresolved attachment issues with accompanying infantile fantasies; this would be damaging if it blocked the orientation towards an adult love-partner after puberty. In the letter mentioned Freud wrote: “One day when I am no more – my discretion will go with me to the grave – it will become manifest that Stekel’s assertion about the harmlessness of unrestrained masturbation is based on a lie.”

This indiscretion is based on the fact that in 1900 Stekel underwent a short therapeutic analysis with Freud (Stekel was the first doctor to practise this new method of treatment alongside Freud), and he thereby gained an insight into Stekel’s life history. In his Letters to a Mother (1929) Stekel himself referred to his biography as follows: “Let me tell you from my own experience how I struggled and suffered. I was the age of your boy when a comrade lent me a book which was called Selbstbewahrung [Self-Protection, 80 edition Leipzig 1883 th– B.N.] and which was widely read by young people. The consequences of self abuse and of loss of semen were described in a dreadful light. What agonising destiny awaited those unhappy people who had fallen prey to this wretched ‘vice’!” His own experience was thus the starting point for Stekel’s tolerant attitude in the “masturbation debate”. He did not want to declaim against an alleged vice, but rather against the vice of guilt and shame feelings.

As early as 1895 Stekel had published an essay on “Coitus in Childhood,” in which he formulated the thesis that sexual impulses which arise spontaneously in every childhood are normal psychological phenomena. “If you ask a large number of intelligent people about this point, and if you require them to think back carefully, every second one will remember certain events in childhood which were then incomprehensible, but which on more precise inspection prove to be the prelude of the sex drive.” Stekel drew this conclusion: “In childhood it is clear how much of what people believe they do by cogitating and exerting their will is to be traced back to instinct. Childhood is the bridge which links homo sapienswith the animal kingdom.” Stekel wanted with this argument to free sexual wishes and behaviour in childhood from prejudice. They were only pathological in “degenerate” or previously sexually abused children.

Freud knew about this essay by Stekel and also cited it in his Aetiology of Hysteria (1896), though completely in the opposite sense to that intended. Correctly understood Stekel’s essay would have undermined the view Freud still took at that time that infantile sexual utterances could only occur as a result of sexual seduction, that is abuse. This assumption, explicitly contradicted by Stekel in 1895, was still being maintained by Freud in 1900 in The Interpretation of Dreams, when he wrote that “childhood” was extolled as “happy” because it did not know sexual desire.

Not until 1905 did Freud correct this view, thereby returning to the position formulated by Stekel ten years earlier. However, in the second edition of The Interpretation of Dreams (1908) there is no correction to his stated view of the first edition. It wasn’t until the third edition (1911), in the foreword of which he thanked Stekel for having helped him to a better understanding of “unconscious thinking,” that the necessary correction followed in that book. In a footnote he now writes: “A closer study of the mental life of children has taught us, to be sure, that sexual instinctual forces, in infantile form, play a large enough part, and one that has been too long overlooked, in the psychical activity of children [...]” But there is no reference to Stekel’s “Coitus in Children,” written in 1895. Instead in the Minutes for a meeting which took place three years earlier, at which Stekel was not present, we read the surprising sentence: “Strange as it may sound, infantile sexuality was really discovered by him - Freud; before that, no hint of it existed in the literature.”

It is, nevertheless, comforting to know that Stekel has at least left a few traces in literary texts. Martin Brinkmann recently pursued him in a clever essay entitled “Freud’s Apostle: Notes on the Viennese Psychiatrist Wilhelm Stekel (1868-1940)” which was published in the journal Krachkultur (14/2012 – Bunte Raben Verlag). According to Brinkmann, Stekel appears in Dashiel Hammett’s novel, The Thin Man (1934) as an authority on psychopathological matters. And Jerome D. Salinger even cites him in The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

Stekel himself also had contacts among literary figures. He was, after all, the person Freud did not mention by name when he wrote in his Delusion and Dream in W. Jensen’s ‘Gradiva’ (1907): “It happened that in the group of men [that is the Wednesday Society – B.N.] among whom the notion first arose there was one [that is Stekel – B.N.] who recalled that in the work of fiction that had last caught his fancy there were several dreams which had, as it were, looked at him with familiar faces, and invited him to attempt to apply to them the method of The Interpretation of Dreams.” And with that the circle was completed; dream and daydream, that is creative writing, emanate from the same source. That is why Stekel had turned to Wilhelm Jensen in March 1902 with these words: “Most esteemed writer, Your wonderful novel, Gradiva, affected us deeply. Us – that means a small psychological society which gathers weekly at the home of Herr Professor Freud, the famous neurologist.” Thus it was Stekel who first brought Freud’s attention to this story, and not C.G. Jung, as Jones incorrectly reported.

Later, as he was preparing his book Die Träume der Dichter (1912, The Dreams of Creative Writers), Stekel turned to not just one, but to many writers, to whom he posed this question, among others: “Do you have criminal elements in your dreams?” Thereupon he received answers from Gerhart Hauptmann and Peter Rosegger. And Karl May was not frightened off either. He immediately let Stekel know of his willingness to collaborate with these words: “You have the most important task of which I can think. Unless it’s got to be straight away, I could report very interesting things to you, though admittedly not really pathological, but rather completely healthy ones.” But the Grim Reaper put a cross through this bill, and later Stekel had sadly to inform the readers of his book: “Alas death tore away from us the talented imaginative author [Karl May – B.N.] before the wished for answer came.” [Read more on this subject in Albrecht von Olenhusen’s “‘Haben Sie Tagträume?’ – Karl May und Wilhelm Stekel” in Mitteilungen der Karl-May-Gesellschaft 35, Nummer 137, 2003.]

The reason why so many writers liked Stekel can be gathered from a newspaper article in which Dr Stekel paints a portrait of himself as “Dr Gutherz:” “He was also a popular scientific writer who disseminated his medical knowledge in various newspapers for the benefit of all classes in an easily understandable form.”

Francis Clark-Lowes: Freud’s Apostle: Wilhelm Stekel and the Early History of Psychoanalysis. Authors OnLine. Gamlingay 2010. 431 pages. £40 sterling, €42,40, $60 ISBN-13: 978075521309

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