[speaker001:] Now, a slight apology to make. This, things aren't going very well for me today. Er, I missed the train, the video thing wouldn't work when I showed my film lunchtime and er, the book that had to read, er, unfortunately, is not in the library, so er, the le let me explain the background to this. In previous years I haven't had a class on the and I thought I had one this year as an experiment [phone rings] and er, pardon me just a second... [telephone conversation starts] hello... yes, that was a little annoying to say the least, cos those students have come in specially for that, yeah,... yeah... yeah... yeah... yeah... right... Oh dear... right... certainly not... well, would it be easier to show them in my office, that's seven, seven, seven? Well, I could fit most of them in, I'm currently getting in about twelve, ten or twelve, I could fit them in.... Alright, let's do that. Could we, could we have it from next Tuesday in my room? That's seven, seven, seven. Yeah, and you could perhaps let me, let me have erm, let me have one of those little ones. Perhaps I could keep it, could I?... Right, okay... yes, sure, sure, sure. Well, shall we have it in my room for next week? Thanks a lot. Bye [phonecall ends]. This audio visual, ah I apologize for that. Sorry, this will be printing for a while. It's just my new book. I'm sorry. You'll just have to put up with the printer chugging away. As I was saying, yes, er erm, I put it down, erm are you gonna tell us the history of the book, or?
[speaker002:] Yeah. There is a bit of
[speaker001:] Right, okay. Well, let's wait and hear wh what says, he'll probably explain to you the history of why it is like this. But as I said, I do apologize. There was a copy in the library at one stage, although not listed under it was under, but I now see that when the other day I looked erm, according to er, there isn't even anything under. Did you look under too?
[speaker002:] Yeah
[speaker001:] Right, right so I'm very sorry. I won't do it again next year. We won't have a class on that's just somebody that republishes the book. But erm, anyway er, tell us what you made of it and we'll take it from there, I think.
[speaker002:] Well, the book was er published in the early nineteen, well, it was written in the early nineteen thirties but er, it wasn't actually published until nineteen sixty seven. Erm, for instance idealistic man primarily, Wilson, President of the United States. So basically, subject given account of er Wilson's life and his personality. In context the psychoanalysis in order to explain erm Wilson's actions and er, attitudes in the pres presidency of the United States during the First World War, basically con concentrates on erm. Despite highlighting er Wilson's intellectual and physical achievements, for instance, he er wrote a very er, well respected book called Con Congressional Government in his earlier cabinet career, and also he initiated domestic reforms, the book is er generally quite scornful, reporting character. Especially the neurosis he suffered from erm, throughout his life on which the his presidential and political career. The main argument put forward by er, er, was that er was that Wilson suffered as an adult, because of the over oppressed rage he, oppressed rage he possessed, which was directed towards his father. As a child, Wilson was er, regularly subjected to the darkness father and criticized and lectured the young Wilson. However, instead of er releasing and dealing with his rage, Wilson er instead chose to strongly identify with his father, erm argued er Wilson never grew beyond his father identification, because the situation whereby er Wilson was full of, of the conviction that his er mission in life was somehow divided. In identifying with what he regarded as his father, Wilson thought that he would er emerge from the war as a saviour to the world, so to speak. two went further in an effort to oppress his rage against his father, and to avoid a highly threatening career situation. Wilson identified with his father, to the extent of wanting to have genital, genital contact with him, since Wilson saw his father as the author of all his skills, his strength and all that he'd been grateful for. This was based on apparently wrote to obtain er, or basically to obtain. This is arguably supported by the close contact of the relationship Wilson had with his father, and Wilson's deeply held religious conviction, which he espoused in his presidency. However, this subconsciously held conflict with his father in subsequent over identification with er led Wilson to be somewhat stubborn, perhaps even complicational as a, as you know, as presidency of the United States, which were, were often directed towards or often only minor details of his work, but he wouldn't he wouldn't actually range them towards say, any major. Er, accompanying this accompanying this frequently not himself, which it occurred throughout his life, through his childhood as well, and his general er sustained willpower which was highlighted by frequent illnesses, especially in his er president of the university, where Wilson suffered defeats and conflicts and transfer of reform of rebuilding the university, and also we see there er back part of his life a Wilson of his own er, seem to direct some of his rage against er, a coloured colleague of his, a. Graham argued that all this is indicative of a person who hasn't grown, fully grown out of his childhood worries, problems, especially the er, he hasn't actually dealt with the true feelings that he had towards his father, and who instead chose to vent his rage on others and political career, which resulted in Wilson being, er well, losing some of his rationality, which led to his poor performance in er negotiating and gaining acceptance of the Treaty of after World War One. Erm, apparently that's what the trouble with the ratifying in Congress that led him erm, some degree to another centre in Massachusetts. Erm, and this also explains in part, why he er complains made by-rules and all concerned what was into Europe, did not materialize. Er, I think if you're gonna try and erm, explain you know, try and assess the validity of the book. Agree or ask yourselves why you agree. Tell us about various reasons, not just study of value of the great of the greatest value there. It seems Freud and perhaps even wanted to er, vent their anger on Wilson, because of his failures concerning the war and its aftermath. Immediately after the war, when Bullett first approached Freud er, with the idea of writing the book, Freud was apparently feeling very depressed, and er, he was savagely critical of his own work, and er, because he had little access to patients during the war, he generally felt quite down and also by presenting written for him, all he would need to wr all he would need to write, and according to er, other people, perhaps he was eating, he was receiving just sort of waiting to die. Whether that's er, I'm not too sure. Erm, anyway, this was when Bullett actually first approached Freud ninetee nineteen hundred and twenty. The disappointment with Wilson felt like Freud must have sort of lingered for quite a long time, cos it was not for eight years that he actually ventured on. This was highlighting the fact, that although, er, Freud thought psychoanalytic should be used in a neutral nerve and not used for any active aggression, an exception seemed to be made with Woodrow Wilson. Although some may be quick to say that the vast majority of the book was actually written by Bullett, and not by Freud, no less than the actual intellectual framework of the book apparently seems to have been due to Freud's input, er, Freud certainly was psychoanalytically trained, in any, in any sense of the word. Er, perhaps the whole project could also be attributed, mainly I think, to Freud's desire to try and keep open the er, the er, analytic publishing house, which he founded in and which er, basically was kept together financially from the er, forwarded, forwarded er, royalties which Bullett sent from America. er, the book has been very heavily attacked by contemporary writers even mentioned passing for the. Complaints have been made, for instance, by erm, er,. The er, book is based on an inaccurate and sometimes even fabricated evidence, due probably to the er, rather idealistic er, excitable ambitious er Bullett, rather than the peaceful like of Freud. Nevertheless, evidence er, was dealt with by our assorted version parent. Much due to the influence of Freud, cos of course, Bullett wasn't a. Contemporary studies of Wilson by, for example, or perhaps even are apparently based much more on fragmented material than Bullett and Freud, Freud would allow. I can't really clarify that. Erm, for example, it appears that Freud and Bullett er, misinterpreted Wilson, especially as regards to the nature of his father. For example, argues that Wilson did not have any sort of homosexual likeness for his father. But that Wilson longed for a psychic union with fantasy, fantasy father. So that er, Woodrow could experience a full sense of self, to actually relate back to his himself, which er, Wilson er, experienced only as a child. His childhood. Er, you have a sexualization of such a long period, Wilson, er, didn't seem to have, sort of, being recorded to his sexual fantasies of that nature. Although there is er a general agreement that Wo situations were, were re really more complicated, in the Wilson family, er,Wil erm, Wilson actually certainly loved his father, his er his mother an and his er father. Er,Wi Wilson, er, did not seem to allow his father's wit and criticism to get him as much as Freud had er, suggested. Er, certainly evidence seems to suggest that a very genuine and close relationship developed with his father. For ex for instance, they er, often confided in one another, usually when they to see what they actually er share each other 's deepest thoughts, and this continued throughout later life, it could be argued bu but it continued throughout later life and what they, they often communicated by er, by letter. It could be argued from this, that er, Wilson's father began to identify more of his son rather than the other way round. Especially as Wilson's academic career flourished, and he er, and he wrote to his father less and less. So of er, resulted in a rather er, sad feeling in his father, the thought that actually his son was starting you started to by his son. argues that er, Wilson suffered from strokes throughout his life, not even emotionally recorded due his psychological condition. The reason why this occurred er erm, the reason why this occurred was not due to some sort of er, due to emotional problems that he suffered within these repressed relations with his son. Erm, and also the reason why Wilson could not actually read until the age of eleven was not due to the emotional er, problems of his father, it was due to a sort of a form of dyslexic er,th there's a hell of a lot of debate about this, er, all these things just what er, Einstein is er, criticizing. But er,sad sadly there's er, evidence that sh show that if there is a dyslexic. Erm, however, it maintains that er, Freud could not have er, known about this, although it seems to invalidate if they are correct. Erm, if the move on the was psychoanalytic issue, er despite the book being generally regarded as an embarrassment to psychoanalytic, is somewhat non. It er, has initiated others to demonstrate how the use of a psychoanalytic science for the actions of upstanding, public, historical figures. Biographical studies can be found on a variety of historical people, including various artists or politicians. But this simply underlines a point that psychoanalysis is, by the very nature biographical, thus historical point, er, historical methods to trace one's actions and reports in the presents, present er, relation to those who they've experienced in the past. If your psychoanalysis is reports, and not just the actions, of it can be a, used as arguments to er, allow this story to emphasise what the human ages evolved at specific suicide of men, erm, goes on to show examples of his erm, he actually claimed to have used this as a sort of process of identification of even fantasizing, in order to try and er demonstrate how er, I think it was Hadrian's Wall was built, try to identify with engineers and architects who built Hadrian's Wall, in order to try and work out what the actual function of the wall was. It wasn't, it wasn't regarded, it was regarded by a positivistic er, as just being er a big wall to stop barbarians er, attacking. People have said he er, they seem to think, that he was more, he was more the sort of territorially divide sheriff sort of er, league of division between er, the two lands, and he was also a sort of lookout post. Erm, this er, again, try to be right be er try to understand the mind, instead of just, just looking at the harsh facts, the hard cold facts and trying from there. So, in effect, there's a subjective animal which can be very useful when trying to explain a glimpse, for example, employed for example the total I E prime and er, also in the psychological. These books also extend beyond a biographical compass of the history, by examining the development of insecurities in society, like as in the future of civilian. And also the relationship between the leaders and the masses in history, er, between the different groups er and then comparing the relations between these masses and different groups and different parts of history. Er, and it can be also er, also er, course in civilizations in history and trace in theory [sneeze] selection in society. Er, psychoanalysis is important, because it acts as a realis as a realistic er, dimension to historical analysis. There is a tendency to try and lo er, continually adjust the plain hard facts, without recognizing that they are, they are in fact socially constructed. That's the objective. It must be supplemented with the subject. For allowing ourselves to look at the report and find the actions, and not just the actions themselves. Erm, so in this, so in times of the Woodrow Wilson or perhaps Freud er, took the subject too, too far. Allow his own feelings and thoughts just to run away with him, which later er, in rather er, a nasty very er, made some very disparaging remarks of the family. But despite the er, rather individualistic nature of the context used there's enough flexibility and openness within the subject content, to say. The psychoanalysis can be used to a limited extent, despite more collective, historical roles er, within disagreed over conflicts in people, or perhaps you say that all the time. Erm, going back to the subjective erm, psychoanalysis introduces erm, no, that's the subject erm, psychoanalysis introduces. Also historians themselves, historians themselves can't actually completely stand outside the events they are actually studying. I mean,th th they're just moving away from the issue, because it it's using a psychoanalytic stories. Try to give a psychoanaly psychoanalytic study issue. Erm, can you keep with me? The er, the very important experiences of this story were never to be received into his work. Or our work. And would be useless the er, content and electrons. I suppose er, suppose that, suppose that er, main department store other contents from other dimensions. Psychological content, but again, in that content, in that er, particular content, psychoanalytical context can be useful.
[speaker001:] Well done,w well done, excellent, I mean. Although as I said, it was perhaps a mistake, erm, both classes produced excellent papers, that th it was a first class paper, in the other class and so was yours. didn't read the book. Where did you get all that material from then?
[speaker002:] Erm, books on psycho history publish yours.
[speaker001:] Right,. Oh, you went through all the psycho history books? Yeah, well done. Erm, well it's a great achievement. I think that given that you were er, you couldn't find the basic book that you were expected to read, I thought you, you gave an excellent account of it, I mean, if you hadn't told us that you hadn't got the book, I don't think we would have guessed, would we? You would've got away with that one. But erm, no, absolutely first rate. Well done. I think you can, you can really erm, you can really be proud of yourself on that. And erm... well, what do other people think, I mean what, I suppose no one else began to look at it either. I will be giving a lecture on it, so I'll have my say about it. Erm, has anybody looked at any of the other books, like for example, the one on? Did you?
[speaker002:] I didn't have time.
[speaker001:] Has anybody got the time? I'll tell you the reason why I did this. Erm, in a way this was a bit provocative. What I... what I thought was, well let's have erm, Woodrow Wilson, okay, as you said at the beginning of the book, Freud admits that he didn't like Wilson, and that he felt betrayed by Wilson, like a lot of people in Central Europe did I suppose, because you know, Wilson came over erm, with fourteen points as the saviour of the world, and went away leaving with a piece of. And Freud and a lot of other German speaking people, thought that he had let them down, because he didn't have the political goodness. Erm, and so Freud at the beginning says that he er, he, he had a personal dislike of er Wilson, and resented him for what he had done and held him responsible for the subsequent disasters. So, so Freud makes no bones about it. Erm, the book by Leo who's er Labour, was a Labour M P, no longer er keen collection reports. Erm, on, I put in because it was the worst example I could find of the abuse of psychoanalysis for destroying somebody's personality, personality assassination by, by er a psychoanalysis. You could imagine what it's like. I mean, erm, if you didn't know it was meant to be serious, you might think it was a great send off of psychoanalysis, you know. Kind of make you hoot with laughter half the time, erm, and the contrast with that is the point, which I don't know whether any of you has looked at, of course, called Gandhi's Truth. Well, as you might tell from the title, Gandhi's Truth is the exact opposite to book, because it idealizes Gandhi, it makes a, a kind of psychoanalytic behaviourography, you know as if Gandhi was some er, great great kind of saint. Despite the fact that Gandhi... one would have thought provided rich material for psychoanalysts, like going to bed with his erm, nieces and his lady doctor erm, and naked and claiming that this was a specific exercise, erm. Nice work if you can get it. Erm, and so on, so, so, so this was the, this was the, er this is what I was trying to do, try and contrast the use of psychoanalysis in, in biography, from character assassination on one hand, to hagiography at the other, and with Freud's Woodrow Wilson somewhere in, in between, but perhaps nearer the character assassination end, because erm, neither of them, er neither of the authors were, really had, had much of a brief of Woodrow Wilson. And, and really it was just as experiment, and erm, the reason I put it in was, I thought, well, you know, this is, this is an ignored book, and as you, as you found to your cost, it's actually hard to come by, harder to come by than I expected.
[speaker002:] It's out of print.
[speaker001:] Yeah, it's out of print, and erm, but I though it raised interesting issues, anyway. I mean did other people think that? And what kind of issues did you think it does raise?
[speaker002:] It's not worth psychoanalysis
[speaker001:] Right, now as mentioned, there's a whole literature on this course,ps psycho-history, isn't there? They've even got their own journal. Have you, have you read any of this stuff,? Erm, this is, this is what this school of thought tries to do. In the past I used to have a, a class on psycho- history, and I dropped it, and one of the reasons why I dropped it was, the lit a lot of the literary was very poor quality, for a start, and erm, people, er, students, er got that too, and I couldn't really blame them. And, er, the other problem with it is, you really have to know quite a lot about history, or biography to really... to really get into. I think you found that with Wilson...
[speaker002:] There was one chapter in the book, I read it in the. All the pages in biography. Five or six pages instant analysis and it hardly [cough]
[speaker001:] No. Absolutely, so...
[speaker002:] Two novels
[speaker001:] If yo I hope you, I suppose you could have a whole course in psycho-history, if you really put into it enough, but... for just one class, I thought it was too much to ask students to attend, to try and have to get into psycho-history, so I haven't erm, done very much of it, and this, my excuse here really was, well Freud did write a book called Woodrow Wilson. It is touching on the social sciences in the sense that Woodrow Wilson was an important political figure, and there is an historical dimension. So that was my excuse, for, for, for bringing it in. But as says, I mean it raises er, a fundamental issue, which is, is psychoanalysis or, psycho, are psycho insights applicable to for example history or biology, and this is the issue, isn't it? What do people think that? Is it just, is it, is it, is it just trivializing, to think, to talk about, for example, Woodrow Wilson's childhood? I mean, does anybody think that's a trivial approach to history? I mean... Do you think so? Yeah. Do everybody agree with that?
[speaker002:] you tell it
[speaker001:] Yes, of course, erm... the point has to be made, that Bullett, unlike contemporary erm, biographers of er Wilson, those people you mentioned, actually knew Wilson, and an you know, being his administration on that man as it were, and apparently Bullett had a lot a first-hand erm, biographical data, didn't he, according to the book?
[speaker002:] Also tended towards to make a judgment of him,
[speaker001:] Mm.
[speaker002:] I think
[speaker001:] Right. Right, and the background to that of course is, for those of you who may not know, Bullett was I suppose a more junior person in the State Department, when he went to Europe with Woodrow Wilson in nineteen eighteen, and nineteen whenever it was for a peace conference, and Bullett was the only one of the American delegation who resigned and confronted Wilson and said, look, you've gone back on the fourteen points, you're not doing what you said you would do. How can you go on with this, and Bullett was the only one of them who resigned and went home. And er, later of course, he became the American Ambassador of Vienna, so Freud met him, but so, so, Bullett had a personal stake in this, but I must admit, er my own view was, was rather to admire Bullett for his stand, because it's a rare politician who stands up and says look, you know, we've been there, having made promises, we've broken all of them, and we ought to resign, or you ought to resign. He told Wilson. And, and he said, you know, if you aren't going to resign, I certainly am. And he did. So erm, it's quite true that Bullett had a personal axe to grind, I think it was a rather justified axe. But erm, it er, that fact remains, he did nail Wilson. He was at the conference, and a lot of the book, if you read the book, is concerned with what actually happened at the conference, and basically, the basic problem with the, the book tries to look at, and this is where we, we get back to question of the childhood days. Why couldn't Wilson stand up to the allies, why couldn't had stand up to Clements or Lloyd George, in particular? They seem to have bullied him and made him er, make concessions, and the question that Freud and Bullett constantly ask is, why did Wilson make these concessions, especially since his position was already defined before he came to Europe, you know he already laid down the fourteen points, and sold it to the American people. And then he came to Europe and, and really, let it all go. And their answer of course is, look, here was erm, there's no political or historical reason, because Wilson had all the cards in his hand. The, admittedly the French and the British were on the right side, they won the war, but France er was er battered in the war, lost an awful lot of people, it's a common and although this country, although, you know, fighting in Britain, the er, British economy was also badly damaged. We were borrowing money from the Americans to keep going, and er, we certainly weren't in any shape to dictate the terms of the peace to the Americans. And er, so Freud and Bullett say, look if Wilson had all the power at the time, and some ways the world in nineteen eighty to twenty was a bit like what it is today, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, really, you really only got one superpower. If, if the Americans had all the power, why did Woodrow Wilson just sell out to the Allies? So, Bullett and Freud conclude, well, it has to be something to do with him personally. And their conclusion is, he couldn't stand up to, to Lloyd George in and the reason was these were strong, erm, male leaders, and Wilson, when it came to being with men, er, was weak, and the question asked is, why was he weak in dealing with men? And the answer is, well, if you look at his relationship with his father, er, he was very overawed by his father, he was very passive and submissive towards his father. And so there they, they claim that his childhood was relevant, because of this character defect in, in Wilson, his inability to stand up to strong men. Even though objectively, he had all the strength on his side, and if he'd only stubbornly insisted, the allies would have had to accept the fourteen points, because there was no way that they just didn't have any erm, any clout really when when finally settled in peace. Wilson could almost have dictated it to them, and perhaps another man would have. So this is their justification for bringing in the childhood. What do you think of that remark? Is that legitimate, do you think, or not?
[speaker002:] Yeah, I think it is. erm you have, when you see the statesmen
[speaker001:] Well, what about the view, let me kind of play devil's advocate here against Freud and Bullett. What about the view? That in history, the important things of economic, er historical, social forces which transcend any individual. What about that view, that the individual person, even a powerful one, like the President of the United States, doesn't really count, compared with economic social geo-political forces, what about that argument?, how does that. Is that the kind of argument that carries any weight with you?
[speaker002:] Erm, I can tell you what the other to look at the personality things like that
[speaker001:] Right, right.
[speaker002:] It seems, you know, because Freud didn't actually analyze just to make a generalization about things he knew about some of the people.
[speaker001:] Yes.
[speaker002:] And that sort of thing counts for what
[speaker001:] Yes, that's [door knock] that's, let me see who that is? [answers the door] Hi. Well, that's his office there. He's not there now. I don't know. Have a word with his secretary. [door closing] Erm, the, yes, I mean, this is a big problem, isn't it? The question is, as you rightly say, in psychoanalysis, the analyst usually has a vast amount much more than people normally realize, I mean, I recall from my own analysis, and mean I was going between two and four times a week erm, for an hour each time and it was a good six months before she would make any interpretations, and I used to get very frustrated, you know, I used to say things like, well, what do you think of this, Miss, you know. What do you think of that, and she would say, well, it's too early, or we don't know yet. You know, and she would constantly say that, and... before six months, there weren't any interpretations at all. Then when interpretations did come, particularly if I disputed them, then it would be, she would be ready with the information. She would say, there, there's the of that dream, or those associations, with this you did. There was all that, and so on, and she would be ready with it, and there was a lot of material there. The problem, as you rightly say, with this kind of secondhand announcers, that how do you know if you've got enough material, and that it's right? Also, if you actually read the book, there is quite a lot of material in the book, it's quite a big book in some ways, and er, the material on Wilson's childhood and so on, erm, is pretty detailed. I mean there is quite a lot seems to be known about Wilson, and he himself, erm, wrote a lot in enormous correspondence and so on, and many of the points they make, are erm, are fairly well validated. Why, for example, one of the, the points that Freud's book makes, is er when Wilson was confronted with a conflict, particularly with a stronger male, like an elder brother, or his father, he would retreat into speech making, and apparently he used to have a barn where he did it, and he used to go and give speeches in the barn. He used to speak to the hay, as it were, and he would do this, er, rather compulsively. This kind of speech making. And of course, when he was a man, he was famous for his speeches, apparently, he was a great, was a great waffler, you know, it was the age of wafflers, I suppose. Erm, we heard a great, he was a great erm, refratition So when Freud and Bullett say, look, Woodrow Wilson was a great refratition and you can see him doing this in his childhood. There is actual evidence that he did do it in his childhood, and th so they're not erm, they're kind of building everything on a single sentence like Leo does, you know, amazingly enough, Leo "s book starts with entry of Who's Who in a single phrase, where she calls herself daughter of, her father. Doesn't mention her mother, and Leo 's whole thesis about was built on this single phrase in Who's Who. words, some future researched, that the printer here, missed that bit, you know, she should have said, and her mother's name, but her mother's got missed out on the proofs or something, I don't, this is the kind of thing that happens, of course. Leo 's entire book will collapse, er, as, as, as perhaps it should. Being a writer of course, being the data problem, er, this is a big problem in psychoanalysis, because whereas erm, in an analysis, the analyst has er hundreds or probably thousands of hours" data from the pre-associations of the patient, at the end. The er, that kind of thing is never published, and or even, of course, it can't be published normally, and the result is that when analysts draw conclusions based on this very confidential data, or who were talking vastly extent. It, it's very very difficult to, to validate perhaps erm, publicly. Yeah.
[speaker002:] making explanations the other way round.
[speaker001:] They are...
[speaker002:] theory that you made a mistake, and you've got to somehow explain that
[speaker001:] They are... They are, they're starting with the end result, and of course in this particular book, they're, what they're starting with really, wasn't a general psychological biography of Wilson, so much has, the problem, why did Wilson give everything away in the conference? That. They work backwards as, as, as you rightly say. The, the, the best defence you could make of that, if you wanted to make a defence of it, would be that in the nineteen twenties and thirties as we've been seeing in the lectures, I'll be saying a bit more about that some... psychoanalyse was, was developing. It's analysis of the egos as, as we've been seeing, in analysis was really all, all it could do at the beginning, after the First World War, shall we say. breaking point. After the First World War, ego analysis was developing. Now one of the consequences that ego analysis was, analysts began to feel confident that they could analyze the defences of the ego, as well as what the ego repressed as a result of its defences. As a result of that, you could examine a defensive structure, and work out why it existed. For example, supposing you erm, this, this, this was used principally in child analysis, which didn't exist before the First World War, it was developed afterwards. The problem with child analysis is, children won't be associated, that can be made to free associate. I mean, don't ask me to explain it's technical and... so it's a very technical matter of ego psychology that you must accept. They can't be induced to do it. And anyway, they don't have the motives. Children are always for analysis, usually by their parents, they don't usually come of their. So the analysts found they couldn't use free association with children. What they could use, was defence analysis. So for example, if you saw a child, who was pathologically independent, wouldn't form emotional attachments or dependencies on other people of the way the child wanted it. The analyst might conclude, well why is this defence structure excessive independence present in this child? A good suggestion might be, in the past this child has suffered a loss of some figure it was dependent on, and has compensated by becoming highly independent. This was a common finding, and Freud often found this in all children during the war. Some of them compensated by becoming highly independent in the end. So what you could do, you could see the defence, and then from that you could work backwards, to the motive of the defence. So, perhaps the reason is the loss of a love object, and then of course if you found there was a in fact a loss of a love, love object, then you might to see in greater detail, how this whole thing came about. Particularly if you discover that that child didn't have a bad characteristic in their in their ego before this event occurred, and so on. So that kind of thing made analysts think that they could go on more than just free associations, they could look at a person's character, as it were. The structure of ego defences, and then draw conclusions. And really, you see, that's what Freud and Bullett are doing in this book. They're looking at Wilson's character, which was quite a, a peculiar one, in both senses of the word, and not just peculiar in the sense of, of, you obviously need to him a peculiar sense of kind of funny, funny peculiar. And they try to work backwards, as you rightly say, to his childhood, to explain why, and, and of course they felt that their explanation, explained the favour of conflicts, because the whole thing was... here was a man with an almighty father. Who saw himself as Jesus, really, and although Jesus came to save the world, he saved the world in a rather masochistic manner, by getting crucified. Well, that's exactly what happened to Woodrow Wilson. He came to save the world in nineteen eighteen, but he got crucified by Clements or Lloyd George. They made mincemeat of fourteen points. And er, so it's, it's an attempt to work backwards, but it has a certain justification in analytic technique. But of course, as you and er, er er, rightly said, in an analysis you would always be able to confirm these interpretations from the patient, because in the end, of course, psychoanalysis is done by the patient, the analyst doesn't do it. The analyst normally just helps. In the end, the analysis is gonna occur, it's the patient who, who really doesn't analyze their ego comes to grips with the unconscious. Of course, in a book you can't handle them, and you can't handle them when the subject is dead. So that will, corroborating dimension of psychoanalysis, what the patient does for himself and cannot possibly count, and as you rightly say, this leaves analytic biography erm, in a, in a kind of limbo. Which is, I really do unsatisfactory. And er, one has to admit, when you look at the literature of like, you know Gandhi, and and this kind of thing, and a lot of it's psycho-history stuff. Erm, you can't help feeling that there has been a mistake. Is that your impression of this? No one does that, yes, that's erm... Well, what, why do you think
[speaker002:] Why? Erm, just having different it's different than what
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[speaker002:] it's different than what people normally think
[speaker001:] Yes, it's interesting you see, if you, if you can compare Freud with other writers who are in the same kind of area and league like. Why do people put up with anything from. Er, we know that systematically seduced a lot of his female patients. He forced his wife to put up with having his mistress living in the house with them. Unfortunate woman erm, er, he as long as they were winning the war, was, was open in his admiration of Hitler and the Nazis. His none of this is ever mentioned about, you know, mention to anybody, and there's er, you know, er, you know, he's one of the good guys. But er, if Freud had done any of that, you'd never hear the end of it. Freud, Nazi lover, you know, Freud, seducer, all this kind of stuff. People would go on about. Erm, and yet erm people like could get away with it. Er, you know, great ethologist, local supporter of the Nazis before World War Two. All forgotten afterwards. Somehow is an okay man. Okay total crap about the aggression of something, a book on aggression. Totally wrong. Nobody animal er behaviour accepts that, that, that nonsense any more. Yeah, you know is okay, he's an okay name. But erm, Sigmund Freud as you rightly say, a moment there's anything you can see wrong if, certainly happens to Darwin. You can have hardly few weeks or months go by when you see some, you know er, latest lunatic disproof of Darwin, you know, appears in the press. Everyone says, oh I know Darwin was wrong. It's almost always crap. The latest book was total crap. I mean it really was. It should never got any, any attention in the press, yet there was all bits in the Sunday Times, Darwin disproved. The reason could be, of course, as you say, that, that people like Darwin and Freud have made really important discoveries and that's why nobody can leave them alone.,, basically crappy people, crappy people. And do you know, so what, so what, you just forget about that. There've been plenty of people like that, all down history, and plenty of them psychologists, who've had lunatic and silly ideas that everyone's forgotten about. But...
[speaker002:] take the time just to study
[speaker001:] Oh, surely... That, that, that's one of the big, that's one of the big problems. It could be of course, that we're too near to them, because if you think about it, this has happened to most great pioneers in, in science, they were, for the first erm, certainly for the first century, there's often a tremendous er, rejection. I mean take erm, people like Copernicus, er, Galileo and Newton. If, if you look at their work, for about the first hundred years after all of them, their work was widely, er, disparaged and rejected. Then after about a hundred years, suddenly people seemed to change their, to change their minds about it. Of course, the hundred years is only just up for Darwin and not yet up for Freud, depending on when you start the hundred years it makes a. Erm, the er, there seems to be kind of latency period when great, innovations in human thought are followed by considerable turbulence and upset, and the figure responsible becomes a kind of er, you know bogey person, that, that, that, that people get, get perhaps that's certainly true of Darwin, though I think it's abating now. But er, it was certainly true of er, even be true of people like Einstein, you know, the tremendous anti-Einstein ruled particularly in Germany which denounced it. It was Jewish and so on, and because Einstein was Jewish and therefore he had to be more Jewish science and erm... there was a book published called fifty against Einstein. Einstein's comment was, one would have been enough [LAUGHTER] and as usual of course, Einstein was right. One would have been enough, if they had any good arguments or data which er they didn't have. I erm, I suppose this is, this is a phenomenon of human history. The trouble with Woodrow Wilson, of course, is if you want to get some, get Freud, well, this book is very handy, because as you've seen, it does solve all your problems. My guess is that in about twenty or thirty years' time, it would be reprinted and people would start to re-think, oh well, perhaps this is not so... True. But, but in writing historical erm, analysis and, and biography, presumably people, I mean, people can't help er writing, writing history, and trying to answer questions, like, why did Woodrow Wilson erm, not the fourteen points through, and presumably, one possible explanation is the kind of Freud Bullett approach, and presumably if you can find erm, relevant data and if you convince, and if you can convince that that's plausible, it's a legitimate thing to attempt to do. We are not saying, that necessarily it's the right thing to do, but it seems to me people are going to do it anyway, aren't they. People are anyway going to try and look for,lo look for explanations, and it may be that, you know, in fifty or a hundred years' time, peoples insight into, into Freud's findings are different. And this is my personal view, as you know I think that people see, er, Freud completely differently in fifty or a hundred years' time. Possibly because Freud himself, you now, was misunderstood. To such a large extent some of the things were misunderstood that he discovered. And when people see psychoanalysis in a different content, then they might look back to things Freud and Bullett studies, and say, well, perhaps it wasn't so amusing after all. Erm, the... sorry one thing I was going say before we finish, because is our only American here, and since Woodrow Wilson was a great American. What's the, what kind of impression have you got from, er you know, from your education and, and er and trying to, focus at home about Woodrow Wilson? How does he seem today, by America? Does he, is he regarded as a great figure, or... Mm.
[speaker002:] Erm, he is erm regarded as in terms of erm, he tried so hard and just
[speaker001:] Mm. Yeah, Right, be with you in a sec. Yeah. Yes Yep. That's right. That must be the, that must be the consensus
[speaker002:] Yeah
[speaker001:] Because I asked in the other classes, three or four American students, and I asked them the same question.
[speaker002:] It's very...
[speaker001:] And they gave the same answer
[speaker002:] The history erm, you know America, history of very interesting and erm,
[speaker001:] Oh, really, oh are you? Er
[speaker002:] Between the wars, and you didn't know this that erm loads of the history that I read here in Britain very different from the history
[speaker001:] Yeah. So they, so do you think there's a tendency for Americans still to kind of idealize Wilson, but for Europeans to be a bit more cynical.
[speaker002:] Well, I think not that they're afraid not to be but...
[speaker001:] Well, I think they have a lot to do, quite a lot to do with it.
[speaker002:] obviously, that erm, I just think that... I don't know, it, it's very different from.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[speaker002:] Whereas God is not always really always the truth reality
[speaker001:] Mm. Yes.
[speaker002:] this is history that you really believe it.
[speaker001:] Sure. Yes.
[speaker002:] But, at the same time, you should go some place else
[speaker001:] To get a different view
[speaker002:] To get a different view, and yet I... it's been very interesting it's been very interesting you know what I mean, you know, always. I nearly cost her a and she don't know.
[speaker001:] That's true, that's true, yes, sure, yes, yes
[speaker002:] Not fair. It's on a personal level
[speaker001:] Yeah, yeah.
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] Well, it, it's just coming up to three, er, well done. Congratulations and apologies. As I said I won't do this next year. Not unless the book comes out again. Can I remind who isn't here. Right, if you see tell her... Yes,. Now if you see tell her how much we missed her. Er, next week we're gonna miss her even more, because she's supposed to be doing the paper. As we'll see another... if this was a black book of Freud's, and in some ways you would say this was one of the blackest. The other blackest, other blackest book is on next week, when we shall see Freud, erm psychoanalysing not Woodrow Wilson, but Moses. So don't miss it folks. And certainly, make sure doesn't. Thanks.
[speaker002:] Erm, I've managed to write an essay or two, would you...