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FREUD'S LEGACY TO HUMAN FREEDOM* LA WRENCE S. KUBIE, ?.?. World War II was already upon us in September, 1949, at the time of Freud's death. In its obituary, the Bulletin of the American Psychoanalytic Association paid tribute to him in these words: "This twentieth century has become heir to the greatest and to the worst ofwhich human nature is capable. Through the long and unpredictable years ofstruggle which lie ahead, one ofthe decisive influences will be the use that is made ofthe tool which was forged by Sigmund Freud." Then it dedicated the Bulletin to his memory "in gratitude for the gain in human stature made possible by his life ofpatient labor." My central concern is with "this gain in human stature" which Freud made possiblenot merely for the few who seek treatment but ultimately for all mankind. This growth, however, is dependent upon our achieving a new dimension offreedom. For there is a struggle for human freedom to be waged not only against external centers ofirresponsible power but against those equally irresponsible internal forces which in varying degrees dominate the mind and heart of Everyman. Because of them, man may be free politically and economically, yet deeply enslaved. He can be free of all arbitrary external controls, yet live under the power of internal compulsions which make ofhim an automaton: insatiable in his needs, inflexible in his methods, and incapable oflearning intellectually or ofmaturing emotionally through experience. Because of these inner processes, man may be an absolute monarch or a constitutionally elected president, an abstract artist or a precise scientist, a criminal or a clergyman, yet not possess the greatest ofall freedoms—the freedom to change. * Read in part before the Rudolph Virchow Medical Society ofNew York City on May 7, 1956, at the New York Academy ofMedicine to honor the centenary ofthe birth of Sigmund Freud. The author is clinical professor of psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, member of the faculty, New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and lecturer in psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons ofColumbia University, New York. ??5 This is precisely because the centers of irresponsible power within any and every personality are those areas which are under the preponderant influence ofpsychological processes which are inaccessible to our capacity for critical self-inspection, since, by virtue ofthis fact, they are equally inaccessible to the corrective influence ofexperience. It is this which makes these centers ofpower irresponsible, rigid, and absolute, obedient to none ofthe laws by which society harmonizes our conflicting wills and interests . Furthermore, there is no known culture in which man has learned how to grow up without burying within himself such secret and irresponsible governors. The challenge which lies ahead of man in his never ending search for freedom is to learn how to limit, control, correct, and ultimately prevent this internal tyranny. This is the Fifth Freedom which remains to be won: the freedom from domination by that which through the ages has been the rigid and unchanging component in man's nature. Every observer ofthe drama ofhuman history has recognized and deplored the fact that human nature has not changed to keep pace with man's increasing knowledge ofthe world in which he lives. These critical observers have long noted that, individually and racially, man has not been able to transmit to succeeding generations even the little wisdom which during the briefspan ofhis life he has succeeded in acquiring. Consequently , as each man repeats his own personal errors, he is drearily repeating , without knowing it, the historic errors of the race. Freud's significance for human culture lies not only in the fact that he has made us more keenly aware of this challenging fact but also that he has given us an understanding by means ofwhich we can hope slowly to win our way to freedom from this antique spiritual prison. To make this clear, I must say another word about this prison in which man finds himself. There is in all ofus an incessant interplay among what are best characterized as conscious, preconscious, and unconscious processes . These never operate alone but always concurrently in varying patterns and arrangements; but in whatever aspect of life unconscious processes dominate the...

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