Freud and the Future Author(s): Thomas Mann Source: Daedalus, Vol. 88, No.

2, Myth and Mythmaking (Spring, 1959), pp. 374-378 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026505 . Accessed: 27/02/2011 18:13
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IV following excerpts from a speech delivered in Vienna, 9 May 1936, in celebration of Freud's eightieth birthday, Thomas Mann comes forth with eloquence as advocate of the "hved" myth. Here it is not the coUective, or social, myth, with which he was concerned in the above quoted passage from Doctor Faustus, but the individual exemplar myth in the hght of which a "depth" biographer or creative writer may choose to view and represent his hero's personality and role and the vicissitudes of his career. FinaUy, he speaks of the possibility of a fresh incarnation of
a mythic character consciously accepted as a way of hfe.

In the

Freud and the Future

Thomas For the myth Mann

is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the into which it reproduces life flows when its traits out pious a writer has of the unconscious. the habit Certainly when acquired of regarding life as mythical and typical there comes a curious of his artist temper, a new refreshment to his heightening perceiving occurs much and shaping powers, which otherwise later in life; for race the in the life of the human while is an early and mythical in the life of the individual it is a late and mature one. primitive stage, is gained is an insight into the What in the truth depicted higher a of the eternal, the ever-being and actual; smiling knowledge a in which of the schema to and according authentic; knowledge which the supposed individual hves, unaware, in his naive behef in as in space and time, of the extent to which his life himself unique is but formula and repetition and his path marked out for him by those who trod it before him. His character is a mythical role which the actor just from the depths to the emerged hght plays in the illu sion that it is his own and unique, that he, as it were, has invented a it aU himself, with and security of which his supposed dignity in time and space is not the source, but rather unique individuahty which he creates out of his deeper consciousness in order that some which was once founded and shall again be repre thing legitimized or ill, whether or sented and once more for nobly good basely, in any formula Reprinted from Essays of Three Decades by Thomas Mann by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright, 1937, 1947, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

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to pattern. its own kind conduct itself according ActuaUy, in the unique and the present, he if his existence consisted merely would not know how to conduct himself at all; he would be confused, in his own foot helpless, unstable self-regard, would not know which to put foremost or what sort of face to put on. His and dignity in the fact that with him security he all unconsciously something timeless has once more emerged into the hght and become present; it is a character; it is native worth, its because origin hes in the
unconscious.

Such is the gaze which the mythically oriented artist bends upon the phenomena ironic and superior gaze, as you can about him?an resides in the gazer and not in that see, for the mythical knowledge at which he gazes. But let us suppose that the mythical point of view could become that it could pass over into the active subjective; conscious and darkly yet joyously there, proudly ego and become of its recurrence and its could celebrate its role and realize typicality, its own value in the that itwas a fresh incarna exclusively knowledge tion of the traditional upon earth. One might say that such a nor should we think alone could be the "hved phenomenon myth"; or unknown. that it is The hfe in the life as a anything novel myth, sacred repetition, is a historical form of life, for the man of ancient times lived thus. . . . scholar Ortega y Gasset Spanish puts it that the man of before he did took a step backwards, like the antiquity, anything, who leaps back to dehver the mortal thrust. He searched bull-fighter the past for a pattern into which he slip as into a diving-bell, might and being thus at once and protected disguised might rush upon his Thus his life was in a sense a reanimation, an present problem. But it is just this life as reanimation attitude. that is the archaizing life as myth. Alexander in the walked of Miltiades; the footsteps ancient of Caesar were convinced, or biographers rightly wrongly, as his that he took Alexander But such "imitation" meant prototype. far more than we mean identi by the word today. It was a mythical familiar to antiquity; but it is operative far into fication, pecuharly modern How times, and at all times is psychically often possible. have we not been told that the was cast in the figure of Napoleon that the of the time forbade antique mold! He regretted mentality him to give himself out for the son of in imitation of Jupiter Ammon, But we need not doubt that?at Alexander. least at the period of his The

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Eastern exploits?he confounded himself with Alexander; mythicaUy while after he turned his face westwards he is said to have declared: or "I am Charlemagne." Note that: not "I am like Charlemagne" is like Charlemagne's," situation but quite simply: "I am he." "My That is the formulation of the myth. Life, then?at any rate?signifi cant hfe?was in ancient times the reconstitution of the in myth to the myth; flesh and blood; it referred to and appealed only through to the past, could it approve itself as genuine it, through reference is the legitimization and significant. The myth of hfe; only through and in it does hfe find self-awareness, Cleo sanction, consecration. can one fulfilled her Aphrodite character even unto death?and patra or hve and die more than in the celebration worthily significantly of the myth? We have only to think of Jesus and His life, which was hved in order that that which was written It might be fulfilled. is not easy to distinguish His own consciousness between and the conventionalizations But His word on the Cross, of the Evangelists. about the ninth hour, that "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" was evidently not in the least an outburst of despair and disillusionment; but on sense of self. For the the contrary a lofty messianic is not phrase not a spontaneous It stands at the of the outcry. original, beginning one end to the other is an from Psalm, which Twenty-second was announcement of the Messiah. quoting, and the quotation Jesus meant: thus did Cleopatra she "Yes, it is I!" Precisely quote when took the asp to her breast to die; and again the quotation meant: "Yes, it is I!" Let us consider for a moment I used the word "celebration" which even a proper usage. in this connection. It is pardonable, For hfe in the myth, in is a kind of celebration, life, so to speak, in quotation, a a that it is making of the past, it becomes act, present rehgious a celebrant of a the performance it becomes by prescribed procedure; a feast. For a feast is an a renewal of the past in the anniversary, Babe is born again on Christmas the world-saving present. Every of earth, to suffer, to die, and to arise. The feast is the abrogation to time, an event, a solemn narrative being played out conformably an immemorial the events in it take place not for the first pattern; to the prototype. It achieves time, but ceremonially according as feasts do, in time with and their phases presentness recurring on each other in time as hours foUowing did in the original they occurrence. a dramatic In antiquity each feast was essentially a mask; it was the scenic with priests as performance, reproduction,

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the life and sufferings

the gods?as

a role to childhood?what regression a in aU our hves! What element plays this genuinely psychoanalytic a human it has in shaping the life of being; operating, large share as mythical identification, indeed, in just the way I have described: as survival, as a in footprints already made! The bond with treading Infantilism?in other words, the father, the imitation of the father, the game of being the father, to father-substitute of a higher and and the transference pictures more these infantile traits work upon the life type?how developed to mark and shape it! I use the word "shape," for of the individual to me in aU seriousness of element the happiest, most pleasurable what we caU education the shaping of the human being, (Bildung), is just this powerful influence of admiration and love, this childish out of profound elected with a father-image identification affinity. a childlike and play-possessed The artist in particular, passionately can teU us of the mysterious effect of yet after all obvious being, own life, his imitation upon his conduct such infantile productive of a career which after aU is often nothing but a reanimation of the and with hero under very different temporal and personal conditions . . . shall we say childish means. very different, in less firmly do I hold that we shaU one day recognize for the building of a new anthro life-work the cornerstone stones are pology and therewith of a new structure, to which many which shaU be the future dwelling of a being brought up today, wiser and freer humanity. This physicianly wiU, I make psychologist no doubt at aU, be honoured as the towards a humanism path-finder of the future, which we dimly divine and which wiU have experienced much that the earlier humanism knew not of. It wiU be a humanism in a different relation to the powers of the lower world, standing the unconscious, the id: a relation bolder, freer, blither, productive in our neurotic, of a riper art than any possible hate fear-ridden, ridden world. Freud is of the opinion that the significance of psycho as a science of the unconscious will in the future far outrank analysis its value as a therapeutic method. But even as a science of the it is a therapeutic method, unconscious in the grand style, a method case. CaU this, if you choose, a the individual overarching poet's that the resolution utopia; but the thought is after aU not unthinkable And no Freud's

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of our great fear and our great hate, their conversion into a different relation to the unconscious which shaU be more the artist's, more ironic and yet not necessarily irreverent, may one day be due to the healing effect of this very science.