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He was a contradictory character. A cold scientist in the days when he was dissecting the nervous system of crayfish, he gave play to another side of his personality when he took his plunge into the Unconscious; even some of his ardent followers concede that in psychoanalysis Freud was unscientific. By nature both tolerant and reflective, he could also be both impatient and intolerant. A searching student of human nature who saw it in all its shades of grey, he yet had a naive way of seeing all acquaintances as either black or white—with the added complication that white friend could turn into black foe overnight.
Freud could be charming. His penetrating, attentive eyes inspired confidence. Relatively short (5 ft. 7 in.), and slight, he was unaffected and simple in demeanor. Not literally a wit, he had a lively sense of humor, and often threw his head back and laughed softly in a way that impressed
U.S. Journalist Max Eastman as "quaint and gnomelike." Freud's voice, too, was gentle. But the master of psychoanalysis could be as imperious as a Habsburg in defense of his rights or his realm. And the man who listened to the most intimate secrets was not good at keeping them; he was often embarrassingly indiscreet.
Stricken with cancer of the jaw in later years, Freud was an uncomplaining patient. Often invited to leave Vienna (which he insisted he hated, so his staying there through 60 years of adult life cried aloud for a candid Freudian explanation), he stuck it out through the inflation after World War I and the advent of the Nazis. He even tried to stay when the Nazis marched in (March 1938). With such ill-assorted allies as the British Home Office (unanalyzed) and Princess Marie Bonaparte (analyzed to a fare-thee-well by Sigmund Freud himself), Ernest Jones flew in after the Anschluss and plucked Freud to the safety of London. One day, 18 months later—on Sept. 23, 1939—Sigmund Freud died. He was 83.
With Gum & Jive. If measured by the narrowest gauge, Freud today is a prophet with little honor in his own country. Among Vienna's 65 psychiatrists, 14 are Freudians (including six who practice psychoanalysis); Adler's adherents number four, and Jung's two. In Germany Freud's influence on psychiatry is resisted; in other walks of life it is omnipresent but hidden. Says a German-Jewish sociologist: "Naziism and anti-Freudianism have the same deep roots in the German people. Why, if they accepted Freud, they would have to stop beating their children." In Switzerland the Calvinist conscience stands in adamant resistance to Freud. In France le Freudisme was little more than an intellectual fad between world wars, but took a spurt when it was reimported in 1945, along with jive and chewing gum from the U.S. The spurt has died; so, almost, has an offshoot psychanalyse existentielle, developed by Jean-Paul Sartre.