SE XIV p292– 3
Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Freud-Philosophy (20. Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod))
Editor’s Introduction
translated by James Strachey
ZEITGEMÄSSES ÜBER KRIEG UND TOD
(a) GERMAN EDITIONS:
1915 Imago, 4 (1), 1-21.
1918 S.K.S.N., 4 , 486-520. (1922, 2nd ed.)
1924 G.S., 10, 315-346.
1924 Leipzig, Vienna and Zurich: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag. Pp. 35.
1946 G.W., 10, 324-355.
(b) ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS:
Reflections on War and Death
1918 New York: Moffat, Yard. Pp. iii + 72. (Tr. A. A. Brill and A. B. Kuttner.)
“Thoughts for the Times on War and Death’
1925 C.P., 4, 288-317. (Tr. E. C. Mayne.)
The present translation is based on the one published in 1925.
These two essays were written round about March and April, 1915, some six months after the outbreak of the first World War, and express some of Freud’s considered views on it. His more personal reactions will be found described in Chapter VII of Ernest Jones’s second volume (1955). A letter written by him to a Dutch acquaintance, Dr. Frederik van Eeden, was published a short time before the present work: it appears as an appendix below, p. 301. Towards the end of the same year, 1915, Freud wrote another essay on an analogous theme, ‘On Transience’,[1] which will also be found below (p. 305). Many years later he returned to the subject once more in his open letter to Einstein, Why War? (1935b)[2]. The second of the present two essays-on death-seems to have been first read by Freud at a meeting, early in April, 1915, of the B’nai B’rith, the Jewish club in Vienna to which he belonged for a large part of his life. (Cf. 194le.) This essay is, of course, to a great extent based on the same material as Section Il of Totem and Taboo (1912-13).
Extracts from the translation of this work published in 1925 were included in Rickman’s Civilization, War and Death, Selections from Three Works by Sigmund Freud (1939, 1-25).
[1] On Transience, SE XIV : November 1915 [1916a] : Sigmund Freud. See this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19151101)
[2] Why War? Letter to Albert Einstein : September 1932 : Sigmund Freud, see this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19320901 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)
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Citations
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Cited by Sigmund Freud
– The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman : March 1920 : Sigmund Freud by James Strachey, see this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19200301 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts),
SE XVIII p162-163, For analysis has explained the enigma of suicide in the following way: probably no one finds the mental energy required to kill himself unless, in the first place, in doing so he is at the same time killing an object with whom he has identified himself, and, in the second place, is turning against himself a death-wish which had been directed against someone else. Nor need the regular discovery of these unconscious death-wishes in those who have attempted suicide surprise us (any more than it ought to make us think that it confirms our deductions), since the unconscious of all human beings is full enough of such death-wishes, even against those they love. [1] Since the girl identified herself with her mother, who should have died at the birth of the child denied to herself, this punishment-fulfilment itself was once again a wish-fulfilment.
[1] SE XVIII p163 Footnote 1 : PFL Vol 9, p389 : Cf. ‘Thoughts for the Times on War and Death’ (1915b).
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General Citation
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-We shall build up again… : 31st March 2020 : Jorge Assef, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Assef or Index of Authors’ texts)
Assef, We shall build up again…
In the summer of 1913, during his vacation in northern Italy, Sigmund Freud went walking with two friends, one of whom, the poet, complained that he could not enjoy the scenery because the idea that all this beauty would vanish did not cease to assail him. Freud tried to convince him otherwise:
I did dispute the pessimistic poet’s view that the transience of what is beautiful involves any loss in its worth (…) It was incomprehensible, I declared, that the thought of the transience of beauty should interfere with out joy of it (…) transience value is scarcity value in time. As the conversation went on, Freud realized that he was not going to persuade his friends: …My failure led me to infer that some powerful emotional factor was at work which was disturbing their judgement (…) it must have been a revolt in their minds against mourning [1]
This was still two years before Freud published “Thoughts for the times on War and Death” (1915)[2] and four years before “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917)[3], but it is clear that the short essay “On Transience” that Freud presented at the Goethe Society in Berlin, where he takes up the anecdote we have just mentioned, already has the germ of those central texts of his works that resonate with Lacan’s words in his lecture in Louvain: “Death belongs to the domain of faith: you are right to believe you’ll die, it sustains you”[4]
[1] Freud, S: “On Transience”, Standard Edition, Vol. XIV, p. 305. The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. London, 1957, SE XIV p305. See On Transience : November 1915 [1916a] : Sigmund Freud, SE XIV, See www.LacanianWorks.org /3 Sigmund Freud (19151101)
[2] this text
[3] Mourning and Melancholia : 1915 [published 1917e] : Sigmund Freud, SE XIV p238-259, See www.LacanianWorks.org /3 Sigmund Freud (19151101 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)
[4] Lacan, J.: Conference in Louvain (1972). Quarto 3. Lettre mensuelle de l’Ecole de la Cause Freudienn. Paris, 1981. See The Death is from the Domain of the Faith : 13th October 1972 (Louvain University, Belgium) : Jacques Lacan, www.LacanianWorks.org /4 Jacques Lacan (19721013)
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SE XIV p278-279
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– Treating Shell Shock – re-conceptualising what worked : 12th March 2021 (Zoom Intercartel Meeting) : Julia Evans, see www.LacanianWorks.org /5 Authors A-Z (Evans or Index of Julia Evans’ works)
Evans states, Further Freud stated 1915 that war has cut the common bonds between contending people so the men are forced back to a place where bonds do not exist iii
[iii] Thoughts on War and Death : 1915 : Sigmund Freud SE XIV p279
SE XIV P278-279, Then the war in which we had refused to believe broke out, and it brought – disillusionment. Not only is it more bloody and more destructive than any war of other days, because of the enormously increased perfection of weapons of attack and defence; it is at least as cruel, as embittered, as implacable as any that has preceded it. It disregards all the restrictions known as International Law, which in peace-time the states had bound themselves to observe; it ignores the prerogatives of the wounded and the medical service, the distinction between civil and military sections of the population, the claims of private property. It tramples in blind fury on all that comes in its way, as though there were to be no future and no peace among men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples, and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long time to come.
Moreover, it has brought to light an almost incredible phenomenon: the civilized nations know and understand one another so little that one can turn against the other with hate and loathing.
Related Texts
-A contribution to the study of shell shock, Being an account of three cases of loss of memory, vision, smell, and taste, Admitted into the Duchess of Westminster War Hospital, Le Touquet : 15th February 1915 : Charles S. Myers, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Myers or Index of Authors)
-The treatment of cases of shell shock in an advanced neurological centre : 29th May 1918 : William Brown, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Brown or Index of Authors)