The Autobiography of Wilhelm Stekel - The Life Story of a Pioneer Psychoanalyst - Wilhelm Stekel

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to transform Goethe’s maxim, “Poetry and Truth,” into the more sober maxim, “Truth without Poetry.” Psychoanalysis has taught us to distrust our memories. Freud proved that there are screen memories, pictures of an apparently harmless nature behind which vitally important experiences lie hidden. How can one separate the chaff from the wheat, how distinguish false memories from accurate ones?

      It is strange that most people know so little about their own childhood. Even more strange, most parents are blind to the experiences of their children. A person who is blind to his own childhood wears psychic blinders which prevent him from seeing many important qualities of his children, especially those qualities and events he himself has repressed.

      The first child seen by the magnifying glass of psychoanalysis was “Little Hans”1 whose initial conflicts Freud described in detail as the phobia of a boy of five years. It is wonderful to read how the youngster had to fight his first internal battle between craving and inhibition, between instincts and morals. Every week his parents took him to Freud and discussed with the master the events and the results of their observations. Thus, the boy had what may be called his first psychoanalysis.

      Sixteen years later a young man came to Freud and introduced himself with the words, “I am ‘Little Hans.’ Yesterday I read the story of my childhood. It will interest you to know that I have forgotten everything except one insignificant detail. I have even forgotten that I came every week to see you.”

      This happens to most people. Therefore, exceptions such as myself, who remember their first experiences clearly should enlighten humanity about the true nature of a child.

      There are many biographies and “confessions.” You may ask whether it is absolutely necessary or desirable for me to supply the public with another life story. My book is unique in that it offers the confessions of a psychoanalyst who has placed his experiences beneath the magnifying glass of psychology in an attempt to induce important conclusions upon the pressing current problems of education. In my book, A Primer for Mothers,2 I presented the fundamentals of a prophylactic education. The success of that book which has, in twenty-two languages, appealed to the minds and hearts of mothers, seems to show beyond question that it filled a gap.

      From the numerous existing autobiographies I would comment only on Rousseau’s Confessions; for all the other autobiographies, and many autobiographic novels, neglect the first impressions of childhood and lack the truth regarding the important problems of sex life. I understand the reluctance these writers have of standing naked before the curious and leering eyes of misunderstanding observers. Many have left sincere diaries with the injunction that they should be published after a certain time. Alas, in spite of the explicit instructions in the last will of the authors, these books were never published. Sometimes they were destroyed, sometimes they were buried in some locked library.

      I know people will vilify me and cast stones at me. But I know, too, that I am not different from other people, that I am perhaps better than some, that I show strength in not retouching the photo of my life or presenting myself as better than I am. Goethe once said: “I never heard of a crime I couldn’t have committed myself under certain circumstances.” What illuminating words! Perhaps we are all more or less alike.

      EARLY CHILDHOOD

      I am the third living child of my parents, and was born in Boyan, Bukovina. In those days it was Austrian territory, but it now belongs to Rumania.3 Preceding me were my brother, six years my senior, and my sister, three years my senior. Four children died before the birth of my brother. My grandmother was still alive. I can picture her wrinkled, wise, and jocular face and her active figure. My grandfather had been dead a long time. His first name was Perez and his ancestors were refugees from Spain.

      How far back do my memories go? I know that we moved from the little village of Boyan to Czernowitz (Cernauti), the capital of Bukovina. It was during the first years of my life. About my earliest youth I know much from the stories of my mother. My nurse was a Ukrainian peasant, Marysia, of whom I know that she had frequent spells of bad temper. My first language was Ukrainian. It was often said that Marysia had transferred her wild temperament to me. My parents were kindhearted; I have seldom seen them angry, but Marysia used to tear her clothes and throw glasses to the floor. Among other things it made her furious when I composed senseless rhymes.

      While I should not like to decide whether or not a nurse is capable of transferring a part of her temperament to the child she suckles, I am convinced that she can give the child an impressive object lesson in tantrums. My mother was certain that my wild temperament came from Marysia’s milk. The nurse remained with us long after I had been weaned. However, I have no conscious recollection of this nurse; what I know of her is derived from what my mother told me. I am not so fortunate as Tolstoi, who, in his book, Earliest Childhood, wrote that he remembered the time when, as an infant, he was wrapped so tightly in bandages that he was unable to move. He cried and wished to be free. He was certain that this was his first and most vivid memory.

      Do we not see in this memory the whole later Tolstoi? All his life he felt the shackles of law, the manacles of marriage, the bondage of the proprieties, and he tried to free himself. In his story, he remembers the whole room resounded with his crying; and did he not later fill the whole world with his din? He realized that he had condensed a number of recollections in this one characteristic picture. What did he do at the end of his life? He looked for freedom; he left his family and his estate; he died as a free man at a railway station in an out-of-the-way corner of the Russian Empire. It was his last station indeed. What he yearned for as a child and could not attain because he was swaddled in diapers, he could achieve at a time when the wings of death were rushing around him, and bringing back to him what he considered his first memory.

      My own first recollection is less dramatic. It seems indifferent, without emotion and without importance. How could it linger in my memory if my inner-self had not been strongly stirred?

      I see the house in which we lived after moving from Boyan. It stands at the crossroads; there is a simple cart in which my grandmother is sitting; after a short visit with us she was going back to Boyan. Now I see with my mind’s eye how my mother gives her a lemon to suck for refreshment on the trip.

      I would explain this memory as the jealousy of the little boy because his mother has neglected him in the presence of the grandmother. Indeed, I have a second memory that may confirm this supposition. Grandmother died. Mother returned in excitement from the funeral. She told how, after Grandmother’s death, neighbors had ransacked the dead woman’s house and stolen many objects. My feeling was a mixture of surprise and malignant joy.

      Before this, something happened that determined my whole life. I visited my grandmother in Boyan, walked in the “main street,” that is, the one street of the village. A little girl called to me. She gave me a bunch of cherries and asked me to play with her. We played the favorite game of children, “father and mother.” My playmate was partly the hostess and partly the servant. I alternated between the role of a host and that of a visitor. (Now there is a gap in my mind.) Nearby is an improvised shed which I remember distinctly. Carpenters had placed boards in such a way as to form a pyramid-like structure. They had nailed the boards together in order to provide a shelter against the rain. We entered the shed and looked cautiously around us. Then we continued to play “father and mother,” and this time we enjoyed the physical side of our “marriage.”

      How did the knowledge of this natural procedure come into my brain? Was it an inherited instinct, or the imitation of something observed in my parents’ home? I cannot decide, but I know that the realization we had done something forbidden came to us both. It was already dark. We crept shyly away from our hiding place and looked around. Did a peasant pass? Did we hear voices of wayfarers? This part is hazy, but I visualize us leaving the shack hand in hand and walking up to our elders. They must have been astonished that we came home so late.4

      I cannot remember any more of my relationship with this girl. I was probably two-and-a-half years old. (Incidentally, thirty years later, I was the physician of this same girl. She was married and had two children. I asked her

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