My Uncle Sigmund Freud
BERNAYS, EDWARD L.
A famous American publicist tells of his relationship with the father of psychoanalysis MY UNCLE SIGMUND FREUD By Edward L. Bernays ERNEST JONE'S extraordinary biography of Sigmund Freud reminded...
...EDWARD L. BERNAYS, the public-relations counselor, is the author of the recent volume, Public Relations...
...in a way, therefore, it is an autobiography without an "I...
...These qualities were to be shown many times in our extended correspondence later, from 1920 on...
...James died of that disease a year later, and, says Freud, "I have always wished that I might be as fearless as he was in the face of approaching death...
...Although we had expected to be awed by the great man, we found he was our well-loved uncle...
...I first met my uncle when I was 9 years old in Austrian Carinthia on the Ossiacher Lake...
...When he wrote "Your most affectionate uncle" or "Your affectionate uncle" or "Affectionately yours," it was signed "Sigm...
...He was dressed in pepper-and-salt knickerbockers, green hat with feather and ram's horn, heavy brown hand-knit socks and heavy brown brogans...
...He climaxed his letter by saying that all autobiographies are worthless because they lie...
...In the spring of 1919, I wrote my uncle from America...
...They were kind and helpful...
...In Europe, I felt as though I were despised, but over there I found myself received by the foremost men as an equal...
...his wife, Martha Bernays, was my father's sister...
...He established his family and his home in London...
...and waited for it to be caught and broiled...
...We discussed family affairs, America, publishing and even public relations...
...Sigi was her "golden son" until she died at the age of 94...
...in his adult life, he called on her every Sunday morning...
...I was proud and gratified that I could be of some service to my uncle during this period of inflation and economic breakdown in Austria...
...A really truthful, complete and sincere account would merely disturb his family and friends...
...When he wrote "Your uncle," it was signed austerely "Freud.' After he met my wife in Austria in 1923, he was most solicitous about her in every letter he wrote me...
...The letter of rejection which Freud wrote me was a masterpiece of objective evaluation, almost a surgical dissection of the offer...
...There was another variation...
...In his letters, he spoke of approaching trouble in Europe...
...He voiced this feeling to me in 1929, in a reply to my letter telling him that Horace Liveright, the publisher, wanted to publish his autobiography...
...In an ironic way, he said to me, "There swim the trout in their price ranges...
...We were saturated with anecdotes and legends arising from my mother's memories of her brother long before he became famous...
...His life had been too quiet and uneventful...
...Its appearance in this country at that time, however, was the result of a timely gift of a box of cigars...
...Enthusiastic about the Lectures, I said that I would be delighted to have it translated and was sure I could get a publisher??specifically Horace Live-right, with whom I was working...
...A famous American publicist tells of his relationship with the father of psychoanalysis MY UNCLE SIGMUND FREUD By Edward L. Bernays ERNEST JONE'S extraordinary biography of Sigmund Freud reminded me of my uncle's vigorous disapproval of autobiographies...
...He had deep insight, too, for in his first letter after meeting her he wrote me that he thought she was a kind, clever and natural girl...
...Our office went into a translation frenzy, surrounded by a group of expert translators...
...He needed money, but this was not an economical way of earning it...
...The guests pointed out the trout they wanted...
...He said to her at that time, "Edward is one of my sons...
...Liveright delightedly accepted the book for publication...
...He took me for long walks on the promenade alongside the brook that flows through Karlsbad...
...Sometimes his letters were signed "Your most affectionate uncle," sometimes "Your affectionate uncle," sometimes "Affectionately yours," sometimes "Your uncle...
...The next time I saw him was some ten years later, when he came to the United Slates to deliver five lectures at the twentieth anniversary of Clark University...
...He made a deep impression...
...I telephoned night after night to foreign correspondents in Vienna...
...I got to know Freud better in 1913, when I spent some time with him and my cousin Anna in Karlsbad, at that time a great Austrian spa...
...He also met William James, the philosopher, and spent some time with him at his camp in the Adirondacks...
...The book helped establish Freud's fame in America...
...We saw Uncle in our lovely little farm house on the lake...
...I recall asking him to comment on the plight of the Austrian people and to make an appeal to Americans for aid...
...It was finally through diplomatic channels, with the help of American authorities in Austria, of William Bullitt, our Ambassador to France at the time, and of Princess Marie Bonaparte of Greece, that he was allowed to leave Austria...
...When the head of the mission returned, he brought me a copy of the German edition of the Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis, which had been delivered at the University of Vienna during the war...
...At our table, I was about to slap a fly crawling on the tablecloth, but he stopped me, saying whimsically, "Let the fly have its walk on the high plateau...
...For example, a wealthy litterateur wanted me to ask Freud to come to America to practice psychoanalysis on a guarantee of $10,000...
...In one of his books, Freud recounted a little scene that occurred as they were walking together...
...My brother-in-law, Leon Fleischman, was his partner...
...I was in Paris in 1919 as a staff member of the United States Committee on Public Information, when a mission was sent to Czechoslovakia and Austria...
...He had a walking stick of regional wood...
...His sister, Anna Freud, is my mother...
...This understanding in many cases could not have been based on experience...
...Most of this correspondence was in his own handwriting, a good deal of it in English, some of it in German...
...Certainly in his own country he was in the dark...
...When Hitler invaded Austria in 1938, we in the United States became frantic because we did not know what would happen to my uncle...
...During World War I, we heard from him only indirectly...
...Jones's book, of course, is not an autobiography...
...It is an unbiased and remarkably scholarly biography, so true and accurate that it might well be an ideal autobiography...
...A great deal has been said about Freud's modesty, but not enough...
...It avoids those faults that Freud believed were inherent in the autobiographical form...
...It is difficult for me to separate Freud the great man from Freud my warm and friendly uncle...
...He responded that he did not consider himself a person of sufficient fame to entitle him to appeal to the American people on behalf of the Austrian people...
...But that is another story...
...One day, at a restaurant where we had lunch, he showed me the trout swimming in a pond in the center of the restaurant...
...They assured me that overt activities should be left to diplomatic channels, that I should not under any circumstances try to communicate directly with Freud...
...He was my double uncle...
...We walked fast over the easy sloping hills, talking all the way??an easy, natural relationship with no strain or awe...
...As early as 1921, he had little hope for Austria...
...I knew he was a wise, modest and kind man...
...Mother told us often that Sigi was the only one of her five brothers and sisters who had his own room, and that my grandmother always referred to Sigi as her "golden son...
...In his letter, he said that an autobiography was completely out of the question...
...He felt young and healthy, he says, and his short visit to America "encouraged my self-respect in every way...
...For a period of years, I carried on a correspondence with Freud on a wide variety of subjects...
...My mother took her family of five growing children??four sisters and myself??to visit their Viennese relatives...
...I asked the head of the mission to take a box of Havana cigars to Freud, who had been deprived of them all through the war...
...During our correspondence in these years, he showed a brilliant understanding of the publishing business and, in fact, whatever he discussed...
...This pleased me greatly...
...Freud tells of his being only 53 at the time...
...it must have derived from his logical and intuitive mind...
...Freud was so pleased with the cigars that he had sent me the first copy of this book to reach Allied territory...
...James, said Freud, handed him a bag he was carrying and asked him to walk on, stating that he would catch up with him as soon as he had gotten through an attack of angina pectoris, which was just coming on...
...There he met James J. Putnam, the Harvard neurologist, an enthusiastic supporter of psychoanalysis...
...He was the first publisher to use public-relations counsel...
...This handsome, brown-bearded man seemed to be an old friend at first sight...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 46
