We appraoch the end. The
anxious feature now was that in the last two years suspicious areas no longer
proved to be precancerous leucoplakias, but definitely malignant recurrences of
the cancer itself. At Christmas time Schur removed a sequestrum of bone, the
one about whose existence Freud had become doubtful, and this gave considerable
relief. But at the same time a swelling appeared and gradually took on an
increasingly ominous look. Early in February Schur was certain it meant a
recurrence, although he could not persuade Exner of the diagnosis. It was
decided to call in Wilfred Trotter, the greatest authority of his time on
cancer. I brought him along to introduce him to Freud, who had last met him at
the Salzburg Congress forty-one years before. He made an examination on
February 10 and again on Feburary 21 and 24, but was also doubtful of the
diagnosis and recommended further observation. Schur and Anna were desperate.
Daily observation over years had made them equally expert in a way no stranger
could be. Schur wrote urgently to Pichler who answered on February 15 with the
advice to apply electrocoagulation followed by radium treatment. Professor
Lacassagne, the Director of the Curie Institute in Paris, was fetched and made
an examination on February 26. He could not advoce radium treatment, however. A
biopsy had disclosed an unmistakable malignant recurrence, but the surgeons
decided it was inaccessible and that no further operation was feasible. So the
case bore now the fatal title “inoperable, incurable cancer.” The end was in
sight. Only palliative treatment remained, and for this purpose recourse was
had to daily administration of Roentgen rays. Lacassagne came again from Paris
on March 12 to superintend the special arrangements for this. The journeys for
the treatment in Dr. Neville Samuel Finzi’s house in Harley Street proved
extremely exhausting, but the treatment had some success in keeping the trouble
at bay.
Freud notified Eitingon of his
situation, and that the treatment would give him a few more weeks of life
during which he could continue his analytic sessions. His last letter to him
was on April 20, a few lines only.
On March 19 Heinz Hartmann, one
of Freud’s favourite pupils, paid him a visit, a final one. Marie Bonaparte was
also in London from February 5 to February 18, from February 25 to March 1, and
from March 13 to March 19. Freud wrote to her after these visits: “I want to say
again how sorry I am not to have been able to give you more of myself when you
stayed with us. Perhaps things will be easier next time you come – if there is
no War – for my pain has been better of late. Dr. Harmer, who has just been,
finds that the treatment has had an unmistakable influence on the appearnce of
the sore place.”
She was again in London from
March 31 to April 1, and this visit was followed by a much less cheerful
letter.
“April 28, 1939
“Meine liebe Marie:
“I have not written to you for
a long time, and no doubt you know why; you can tell by my handwriting. I am
not getting on well; my complaint and the effects of the treatment share the
responsibility in a proportion I cannot determine. The people around have tried
to wrap me in an atmosphere of optimism: the cancer is shrinking; the reactions
to the treatment are temporary. I don’t believe any of it, and don’t like being
deceived.
“You know that Anna will not be
coming to the Paris Congress because she cannot leave me. [The Congress of
French-speaking analysis.] I get more and more dependent on her and less on
myself. Some intercurrent illness that would cut short the cruel proceeding
would be very welcome. So should I look forward to seeing you in May? …
“With that I greet you warmly;
my thoughts are much with you.
“Yours
“Freud”
She came for his last birthday
and stayed three days, which seem to have been more enjoyable. Freud wrote
after it: “We all specially enjoyed your visit, and the prospect of seeing you
again soon is splendid, even if you don’t bring anything from S. [Segredakei
used to sell Greek antiquities in Paris]
“Just think, Finzi is so
satisfied that he has given me a whole week’s holiday from the treatment. All
the same I have not noticed the great improvement and I daresay the growth will
increase again in the interval, as it did in a previous one.”
Marie Bonaparte came again to
London on June 2 for a couple of days, and after that got the last letter she
was ever to receive from Freud: “The day before yesterday I was about to write
you a long letter condoling with you about the death of our old Tatoun [A
favourite chow.] and to tell you that on your next visit I should eagerly
listen to what you may have to relate about your new writings, and add a word
wherever I feel I can. The two next nights have again cruelly destroyed my
expectations. The radium has once more begun to eat in, with pain and toxic
effects, and my World is again what it was before – a little island of pain
floating on a sea of indifference.
“Finzi continues to assure me
of his satisfaction. My last complaint he answered with the words: ‘At the end
you will be satisfied too.’ So he lures me, half against my will, to go on
hoping and in the meantime to go on suffering.”
Marie Bonaparte came to see
Freud twice more, on June 29 for a couple of days, and for the last time, from
July 31 to August 6.
Freud was very eager to see his
Moses book appear in English in his lifetime, so my wife, who was translating
it, worked hard and the book was published in March, to Freud’s gratification.
He wrote to Hanns Sachs: “The Moses is not an unworthy leavetaking.” He of
course received a number of letters about it. Here is one from H.G. Wells.
“March 1939
“My dear Freud:
“Your book was waiting in the
hall when I came home from the Royal Society Conversazione at half past eleven
and I found it so fascinating that I did not get to bed until one. I am rather
exercised about one point, about Aaron. The Bible makes it clear that Moses
could not talk to the Israelites. He needed a spokesman. Now if Moses was not
simply tongue-tied but ignorant of Hebrew and without any desire to learn
Hebrew Aaron becomes his interpreter, which seems to me to strengthen your case
enormously. But for some reason you do not stress this. All the rest of your
suggestions I find immensely probable.
“My
warmest salutations
“Yours ever
“H.G.
Wells”
And here is a translation of
one from Einstein.
“Sehr geehrter Herr Freud:
“I thank you warmly for sending
me your new Work, which has naturally interested me greatly. I had already read
your two essays in Imago, which Dr. Klopstock, a physician friend, had brought
me. Your idea that Moses was a distinguished Egyptian and a member of the
priestly caste has much to be said for it, also what you say about the ritual
of circumcision.
“I quite specially admire your
achievement, as I do with all your writings, from a literary point of view. I
do not know any contemporary who has presented his subject in the German
language in such a masterly fashion. I have always regretted that for a
non-expert, who has no experience with patients, it is hardly possible to form
a judgement about the finality of the conclusions in your writings. But after
all this is so with all scientific achievements. One must be glad when one is
able to grasp the structure of the thoughts expressed.
“With sincere admiration and
with cordial wishes
“Yours
“A.
Einstein”
The British Psycho-Analytical
Society celebrated the twenty-fifth years of their existence by holding a
banquet in March, and it was the occasion of my receiving the last letter I
ever did from Freud.
“March 7, 1939
“Dear Jones:
“I still find it curious with
what little presentiment we humans look to the future. When shortly before the
War you told me about founding a psychoanalytical society in London I could not
foresee that a quarter of a century later I should be living so near to it and
to you, and still less could I have imagined it possible that in spite of being
so near I should not be taking part in your gathering.
“But in our helplessness we
have to accept what fate brings. So I must content myself with sending your
celebrating Society a cordial greeting and the warmest wishes from afar and yet
so near. The events of the past years have brought it about that London has
become the main site and centre of the psychoanalytical movement. May the
Society which discharges this function fulfill it in the most brilliant
fashion.
“Ihr alter
“Sigm. Freud”
The
reason why he here added his first name to his signature was because he had
learned that in England only peers of the realm signed with a single word; it
was one of the peculiarities of England that much amused him.
He had written on February 20
to Arnold Zweig, giving him an account of the uncertain progress of his
condition, and on March 5 he wrote his last letter to him. In it he advised him
to emigrate to America rather than England. “England is in most respects
better, but it is very hard to adap oneself to it, and you would not have my
presence near you for long. America seems to me an Anti-Paradise, but it has so
much room and so many possibilities, and in the end one does come to belong to
it. Einstein told a friend recently that at first America looked to him like a
caricature of a country, but now he feels himself quite at home there …. There
is no longer any doubt that I have a new recurrence of my dear old cancer with
which I have been sharing my existence for sixteen years. Which of us would
prove to be the stronger we could not at that time predict.”
In April a blow fell that Freud
found hard to bear. He was very dependent on the day to day ministrations of
his personal doctor, Schur, in whose judgement he had supreme confidence and to
whom he was devoted. Yet Schur himself was not faced with a painful dilemma.
His quota number for the United States had been called up, and if he did not
accept it he would imperil his and his children’s future. He decided to take
it, and to pay a visit to America where he would take out his first
naturalisation papers. He left on April 21 and got back on July 8. Dr. Samet
took his place temporarily, and then Dr. Harmer, with Exner in charge. During
his absence he received regular reports which showed no serious worsening until
the end of the time.
On his return he found a great
change in Freud’s condition. He looked much worse in general, had lost weight
and was showing some signs of apathy. There was a cancerous ulceration
attacking the cheek and the basse of the orbit. Even his best friend, his sound
sleep which had sustained him so long, was now deserting him. Anna had to
continue her practice of applying orthoform locally several times in the night.
One of the very last visitors
was one of Freud’s earliest analytical friends, Hanns Sachs, who came in July
to take what he knew would be his last leave of the man he called his “master
and friend.” Sachs was particularly struck by two observations. One was that
with all the distress of his painful condition Freud showed no sign of
complaint or irritability – nothing but full acceptance of his fate and
resignation to it. The other was that even then he could take interest in the
situation in America and showed himself fully informed about the personalities
and recent events in analytical circles there. As Freud would have wished,
their final parting was made in a friendly but unemotional fashion.
Freud, like all good doctors,
was averse to taking drugs. As he put
it once to Stefan Zweig, “I prefer to think in torment than not to be able to
think clearly.” Now hoever, he consented
to take an occasional dose of aspirin, the only drug he accepted before the
very end. And he managed somehow to continue with his analytic work until the
end of July. On September 1, his granddaughter Eva, Oliver’s child, paid him a
last visit; he was specially fond of that charming girl, who was to die in
France five years later.
In August eerything went
downhill rapidly. A distressing symptom was an unpleasant odor from the wound,
so that when his favourite chow was brought to visit him she shrank into a far
corner of the room, a heart-rending experience which revealed to the sick man
the pass he had reached. He was getting very weak and spent his time in a sick
bay in his study from which he could gaze at his beloved flowers in the garden.
He read the newspapers and followed world events to the end. As the Second
World War approached he was confident it would mean the end of Hitler. The day
it broke out there was an air raid warning – a false alarm, as it turned out –
when Freud was lying on his couch in the garden; he was quite unperturbed. He
watched with considerable interest the steps taken to safeguard his manuscripts
and collection of antiquities. But when a broadcast announced that this was to
be the last War, and Schur asked him if he believed that, he could only reply: “Anyhow
it is my last War.” He found it hardly possible to eat anything. The last book
he was able to read was Balzac’s La Peau de chagrin, on which he commented
wryly: “That is just the book for me. It deals with starvation.” He meant
rather the gradual shrinking, the becoming less and less, described so
poignantly in the book.
But with all this agony there
was never the slightest sign of impatience of irritability. The philosophy of
resignation and the acceptance of the unalterable Reality triumphed
throughout.
The cancer ate its way through the cheek
to the outside and the septic condition was heightened. The exhaustion
was extreme and the misery indescribable. On September 19 I was sent for to say
good-by to him and called him by name as he dozed. He opened his eyes,
recognised me and waved his hand, then dropped it with a highly expressive
gesture that conveyed a wealth of meaning: greetings, farewell, resignation. It
said as plainly as possible “The rest is silence.” There was no need to
exchange a word. In a second he fell asleep again. On September 21 Freud said
to his doctor: “My dear Schur, you
remember our first talk. You promised me then you would help me when I could no
longer carry on. It is only Torture now and it has no longer any sense.” Schur
pressed his hand and promised he would give him adequate sedation; Freud
thanked him, adding after a moment of hesitation: “Tell Anna about our talk.” There was no emotionalism or self-pity, only Reality –
an impressive and unforgettable scene.
The next morning Schur gave
Freud a third of a grain of morphia. For someone at such a point of exhaustion
as Freud then was, and so complete a stranger to opiates, that small dose
sufficed. He sighed with relief and sank into a peaceful sleep; he was
evidently close to the end of his reserves. He died just before midnight the
next day, 23 September 1939. His long and arduous life was at an end and his
sufferings over. Freud died as he had lived – a realist.
Freud’s body was cremated at
Golder’s Green on the morning of 26 September in the presence of a large number
of mourners, including Marie Bonaparte and the Lampls from abroad, and his
ashes repose there in one of his favourite Gracian urns. The family asked me to
deliver the funeral oration. Stefan Zweig then made a long speech in German
which was doubtless more eloquent than mine but which could not have been more
deeply felt.
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