The Wolf-Man and Sigmund Freud

Muriel Gardiner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429922787
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

It is a well known that the Wolf-Man was the subject of what James Strachey described as 'the most elaborate and no doubt the most important of all Freud's case histories'. It is less well known that he was still living in Vienna more than half a century since his analysis with Freud. In this remarkable biographical account, the Wolf-Man comes alive not only through Freud's case history, which is reprinted in full, and Ruth Mack Brunswick's account of the follow-up analysis which she conducted, but also through his own autobiographical memoirs covering his childhood in Russia, his recollections of Freud, his marriage, and the circumstances of his life in Vienna after the First World War. The story of the Wolf-Man's later years is told by the editor of this volume, the author, who kept in close touch with him following the shattering suicide of his wife in 1938.

Part I

The Memoirs of the Wolf-Man

Translated by Muriel Gardiner

Recollections of My Childhood

Introduction

To psychoanalysts this first chapter of the Wolf-Man’s Memoirs will be of special interest because it covers the same period of his life as Freud’s From the History of an Infantile Neurosis. The little boy’s earliest memory, apparently, was of an attack of malaria when he was lying in the garden in summer. This actual memory would seem to be of the same summer as the reconstructed observation of the primal scene. Memories of the English governess, including the two screen memories mentioned by Freud, appear here, and we learn also of other governesses who followed. Miss Elisabeth, who came when the English governess left, probably several months before the boy was four, used to read aloud in the evening from Grimms’ Fairy Tales, the stories which played such a role in the choice of the Wolf-Man’s animal phobia, and he and his Nanya listened with fascinated attention. Mademoiselle, a little later, introduced the child to the story of Charlemagne, and he compared himself with this hero who had had all possible gifts dropped into his cradle by benevolent spirits. We understand the analogy when we remember Freud’s statements that, because he had been born with a caul, a “lucky hood,” the Wolf-Man had throughout his childhood “looked on himself as a special child of fortune whom no ill could befall,” and that his adult neurosis broke out when he was “compelled to abandon his hope of being personally favored by destiny.”

The important people in the Wolf Man’s early life were of course his parents and sister, his beloved Nanya (he has told me that he loved her better than his parents), governesses, tutors, and servants, and a few relatives. The account here of his paternal grandparents and their sons points up the family pathology which Freud speaks of, the hereditary taint with which the Wolf-Man felt he was burdened. As we know, the Wolf-Man’s father had periods of severe depression requiring hospitalization; aside from these periods his “normal personality” was hy-pomanic, and he was diagnosed as manic-depressive. The circumstances of his sudden death at forty-nine were never cleared up; it may have occurred from an overdose of veronal.

The father’s youngest brother is desenbed by Freud as “an eccentric, with indications of a severe obsessional neurosis.” The Wolf-Man’s account corroborates the eccentricity and also describes paranoid symptoms. The illness was diagnosed by Korsakoff as paranoia. The paternal grandmother’s probable suicide and her husband’s subsequent “unbelievable” behavior, reminiscent of the father of The Brothers Karamazov, fill out the picture of the Wolf-Man’s unhappy heritage.

Many details in these “Recollections,” such as the epidemic among the 200,000 sheep on the estate, touch on matters already known from Freud’s case. This is true also of the children’s rare contacts with their parents, except for their mother’s attentive care when they were ill, the mother’s own illnesses, and the little boy’s religious ardor and his torturing doubts. The Wolf-Man makes little attempt here to interpret what he describes, and we should not wonder if his memories differ in a few details from the events as Freud interprets them. In essence these “Recollections” are the quiet, faithfully painted background to the dynamic psychic action of Freud’s History of an Infantile Neurosis.

M.G.

I, who am now a Russian émigré, eighty-three years of age, and who was one of Freud’s early psychoanalytic patients, known as “The Wolf-Man,” am sitting down to write my recollections of my childhood.

I was born on Christmas Eve,¹ 1886, according to the Julian calendar in use in Russia at that time,² on my father’s estate on the banks of the Dnieper, north of the provincial city Kherson. This estate was well known throughout the surrounding countryside, because part of our land was used as a marketplace where fairs were held every now and then. As a small child I once watched one of these Russian country fairs. I was walking in our garden and heard noise and lively shouting behind the garden fence. Looking through a crack in the fence, I saw campfires burning— it was wintertime—with gypsies and other strange people clustered around them. The gypsies were gesticulating wildly, and everyone was loudly shouting at the same time. There were many horses, and the people were evidently arguing about their price. This scene created an impression of indescribable confusion, and I thought to myself that the goings-on in hell must be pretty much like this.

My father sold this estate when I was about five years old, so all my memories of this place belong to the time before I was five. As my Nanya (nurse) told me, I was very ill with severe pneumonia when I was only a few months old, and had even been given up by the doctors. I also suffered from malaria in my very early childhood, and have retained the memory of one attack. I dimly remember that it was summer and I was lying in the garden, and although I had no pain I felt extremely miserable, because of the high fever, I suppose.

From hearsay I know that I had, as an infant, Titian-red hair. After my first haircut, however, my hair turned dark brown, something my mother deeply regretted. She kept a little lock of the cut-off Titian-red hair, as a sort of “relic,” her entire life.

I have been told also that in my early childhood I was a quiet, almost phlegmatic child, but that my character changed completely after the arrival of the English governess, Miss Oven. Although she was with us only a few months, I became a very nervous, irritable child, subject to severe temper tantrums.

Soon after Miss Oven came to us, my parents left home to travel abroad, leaving my sister Anna and me in the care of my Nanya and Miss Oven. Anna was two and a half years older than I, and Miss Oven was evidently engaged more for her than for me. My parents had left the supervision of both Miss Oven and my Nanya to our maternal grandmother, who unfortunately did not really assume this responsibility. Although she was aware of Miss Oven’s harmful influence on me, she did not dare to dismiss her, and kept waiting for the return of our parents. This return was delayed over and over again, so that Miss Oven, who was either a severe psychopath or often under the influence of alcohol, continued her mischief for several months.

It is difficult to know exactly what went on. I can remember, and our grandmother confirmed this, that angry quarrels broke out between my Nanya and me on the one side and Miss Oven on the other. Evidently Miss Oven kept teasing me, and knew how to arouse my fury, which must have given her some sort of sadistic satisfaction.

We lived on the estate where I was born only in the winter. Our summer home was in Tyerni, a few miles away. Every spring we moved to Tyerni, and our luggage followed us in numerous wagons. In Tyerni we had a big country house in a beautiful old park. I can remember how a saddled pony would be brought out for me there, and I would be lifted up on it and led around. But this ponyriding did not give me nearly so much pleasure as the times when my father would take me up in front of him on his saddle, and we would have a pleasant trot. This made me feel like a grownup riding on a big “real” horse.

Trips between the estate on the Dnieper and Tyerni took place sometimes during the summer also. My earliest recollection of Miss Oven, a perfectly innocent one, is connected with one of these trips. I was sitting beside Miss Oven in a closed carriage. She behaved in quite a friendly way to me and tried to teach me a few English words, repeating several times the word “boy.”

Besides this earliest memory of this person who did me so much harm, I recall several other incidents. We had some long candies that looked rather like sticks. Miss Oven told us they were really little pieces of a cut-up snake. There was another little episode in which Miss Oven got the worst of it. While we were making an excursion on a little boat ³ on the Dnieper, Miss Oven’s hat blew off and settled on the water like a bird’s nest, greatly delighting my Nanya and me. I also remember walking in the garden with Miss Oven. She ran ahead of us, gathered up her skirt in back, waddled back and forth, and called to us over and over: “Look at my little tail, look at my little tail.”

Unlike me, Anna apparently got on with Miss Oven fairly well, and even seemed to enjoy it when Miss Oven teased me. Anna began to imitate Miss Oven and teased me, too. Once she told me she would show me a nice picture of a pretty little girl. I was eager to see this picture, but Anna covered it with a piece of paper. When she finally took the piece of paper away, I saw, instead of a pretty little girl, a wolf standing on his hind legs with his jaws wide open, about to swallow Little Red Riding Hood. I began to scream and had a real temper tantrum. Probably the cause of this outburst of rage was not so much my fear of the wolf as my disappointment and anger at Anna for teasing me.

In her early childhood Anna behaved less like a little girl than like a naughty boy. She never played with dolls, which surprised me very much. The thought occurred to me that if I had been a girl I would have loved to play with dolls. As a boy I was ashamed to do this. Later my favorite play was with tin soldiers; perhaps this was a substitute for dolls.

Anna’s phase of Sturm und Drang, as one might call it, did not last very long. Even while we were still on the first estate, she gradually became quieter and more serious, and began to be absorbed in reading. Her behavior to me changed, too, and she began to play the older sister, teaching her little brother. She taught me, for instance, to tell time, and told me that the earth is actually a sphere. At that time I had often driven in a carriage beside my father through the fields and the steppes, and had frequently noticed that the horizon seemed to form a circle in every direction. But a sphere? This seemed to me impossible. I pictured the earth rather as a disc.

After Miss Oven had been discharged, a new governess, Miss Elisabeth, came to us. She was about forty years old and had a rather dark complexion. Although she had been born in Russia, she was really a Bulgarian. She was a simple person, with whom I and my Nanya got on quite well. As the memory of the Russian-Turkish war, by which the Bulgarians were freed from the Turkish yoke, was still quite fresh, she often told us of the atrocities the Turks had formerly committee! against the Bulgarians. The only other thing I remember about Miss Elisabeth is that she smoked cigarettes practically all day long.

My Nanya was a peasant woman from the period when there was still serfdom. She was a completely honest and devoted soul, with a heart of gold. In her youth she had been married, but her son had died as an infant. So she had apparently transferred all her mother love from this dead son to me.

Almost all our reading matter at that time consisted of Russian translations of German fairy tales. In the evening Miss Elisabeth would read us Grimms’ Fairy Tales, which my Nanya and I found very interesting and exciting. We knew the Russian translations of Snow White, Cinderella, and other stories. I really don’t understand what gave Miss Elisabeth the idea of reading us Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as this book with its horrible details of mistreatment of the Negroes was certainly no suitable reading matter for children. Some of the descriptions of the Negroes’ punishments even disturbed me in my sleep.

As our parents were often away, my sister and I were left mostly under the supervision of strangers, and even when our parents were home we had little contact with them. I do remember that my father taught me the Russian alphabet and taught me to read Russian. And for a while he visited us children every evening and played a game with us called “Don’t Get Angry, Man.” One spread out a gameboard which was a map of European Russia, and everyone had a wooden figure, something like a chessman. By throwing dice each player determined how far he could move and what route he was to take on the map. Whoever reached the end of the journey first was the winner. I enjoyed this game tremendously, probably partly because we played it with my father, whom at this time I dearly loved and admired. Unfortunately these evening visits of my father’s soon came to an end as he had no more time for them. When we had played this game with our father, he often told us many things about the cities and regions on the map, so when he no longer played with us the game was less interesting and less fun, and we finally stopped playing altogether.

My mother had a calm, quiet nature, and was a mistress of so-called “mother wit.” This gift of seeing the humorous side of even unpleasant situations and not taking them too tragically helped her all her life in overcoming many difficulties and troubles.

In spite of this quality, as she came from a rather patriarchal family and was little inclined to outbursts of feeling, she had some difficulty in sympathizing with the turbulent nature of my father and the eccentricities of his brothers, whom she jokingly called “The Brothers Karamazov.” Although she did not suffer from depression, in her youth she was rather hypochondriacal and imagined she had various illnesses which she did not have at all. In fact she lived to the considerable age of eighty-seven. As she grew older her hypochondria disappeared, and even though she lost her entire fortune, she felt much better as an older woman than in her youth. Only the last few years before her death, when she was confined to her room all day long, her hypochondria reappeared, but in a much milder form.

Since my mother, as a young woman, was so concerned about her health, she did not have much time left for us. But if my sister or I was ill, she became an exemplary nurse. She stayed with us almost all the time and saw to it that our temperature was taken regularly and our medicine given us at the right time. I can remember that as a child I sometimes wished I would get sick, to be able to enjoy my mother’s being with me and looking after me.

Besides this, it was my mother who first taught me something about religion. I had come upon a book with a picture on the cover of the Czech reformer Huss being burned at the stake, and I asked my mother what this picture meant. My mother made my question the occasion to sketch for me the most important tenets of the Christian religion. I was most impressed by everything I learned about the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. As my Nanya was very devout and sometimes told me stories of the saints and martyrs, I gradually became very religious myself and began to concern myself with the Christian doctrine. But soon I began to doubt why, if God was so all-powerful, the crucifixion of His son was necessary, and why, in spite of God’s omnipotence, there was so much evil in the world. I tried to suppress these doubts, but they came again and again. I was really tortured, because I felt this doubting was a terrible sin.

My sister and I both liked to draw. At first we used to draw trees, and I found Anna’s way of drawing the little round leaves particularly attractive and interesting. But not wanting to imitate her, I soon gave up tree-drawing. I began trying to draw horses true to nature, but unfortunately every horse I drew looked more like a dog or a wolf than like a real horse. I succeeded better with human beings, and drew, for instance, a “drunkard,” a “miser,” and similar characters. When we had visitors, and one of them struck me as in some way unusual, I would imitate his gestures and repeat those words or sentences which seemed to me odd or funny. This amused my parents and made them suppose I had some talent for acting. But it was none of these things but something quite different which most aroused my interest and attention. This was a little accordion, which was given to me when I was about four years old, probably as a Christmas present. I was literally in love with it, and could not understand why people needed other musical instruments, such as a piano or a violin, when the accordion was so much more beautiful.

It was winter, and when darkness fell I sometimes went to a room where I would be undisturbed and where I thought nobody would hear me, and began to improvise. I imagined a lonely winter landscape with a sleigh drawn by a horse toiling through the snow. I tried to produce the sounds on my accordion which would match the mood of this fantasy.

Unfortunately these musical attempts soon came to an end. One time my father happened to be in an adjoining room and heard me improvising. The next day he called me into his room, asking me to bring along my accordion. On entering, I heard him talking to an unknown gentleman about my attempts at composition, which he called interesting. Then he asked me to play what I had been playing the previous evening. This request embarrassed me greatly because I was unable to repeat my improvisations “on command.” I failed miserably and my father angrily dismissed me. After this painful failure I lost all interest in my beloved instrument, left it lying around somewhere in my room, and never touched it again. With this my whole relation to music was destroyed. Later my father got the idea that I should study violin. This was unfortunate because I really disliked this particular instrument. The dislike grew into hatred as the screeching noises I made got on my nerves, and it bothered me to stretch out my left arm for so long a time. As I neglected to practice in my teacher’s absence, my progress was of course minimal. Each time, however, when my father asked the violin teacher whether it was worth while to continue my lessons, the teacher—not wanting to lose his fee—replied that “now it would really be a pity” to stop. It was only after six years that I was freed from this ordeal, when my father finally realized that it made no sense to go on with the music lessons.

We not only grew crops on our estate, but also raised a huge number of sheep. Once something took place which created a sensation among the specialists throughout all of Russia. A dangerous epidemic suddenly...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Foreword
• Part I: The Memoirs of the Wolf-Man
• Part II: Psychoanalysis and the Wolf-Man
• Part III: The Wolf-Man in Later Life
• Acknowledgements
• Index