Word: fliess
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...surgery was hardly a success: Emma's nose began to bleed regularly and profusely. A few weeks after the operation, another doctor found that Fliess had left over half a meter of gauze inside her nose. As Freud later wrote to Fliess, the other physician "pulled at something like a thread, kept on pulling and before either one of us had time to think, at least half a meter of gauze had been removed from the cavity. The next moment came a flood of blood. The patient turned white, her eyes bulged, and she had no pulse." However, with...
...aftermath of this fiasco, Masson maintains, Freud gradually and subconsciously convinced himself that Emma's bleeding was not caused by the actions of his friend Fliess, but occurred for other reasons. Freud came to believe that her spells of bleeding were Emma's ways of expressing a longing for his presence. Freud wrote that "her episodes of bleeding were hysterical, were occasioned by longing" and that "she became restless during the night because of an unconscious wish to entice me to go there, and since I did not come during the night, she renewed the bleeding, as an unfailing means...
Masson carefully traces this shift, chronicled in the letters Freud wrote to Fliess in the aftermath of the operation. According to Masson. "The powerful tool that Freud was discovering the psychological explanation of physical illness, was being pressed into service to exculpate his own dubious behavior [in allowing the operation] and the even more dubious behavior of his closest friend. Freud has begun to explain away his own bad conscience...
...call Freud sexist is nothing new, but this book is striking in its account of Eckstein's bungled treatment at the hands of Freud and Fliess. The illfated operation can be excused as potentially well-meaning, but the two men's attitudes toward her in the aftermath of the surgery are truly appalling. Neither doctor, Masson's research reveals, felt any guilt or compassion towards Emma, who nearly died as a result of the failed operation...
...Instead Fliess' first concern was apparently the modern reflex--he wanted a letter absolving him from any malpractice. Freud's reaction, too, was entirely self-centered. When Emma first began to hemorrhage, Freud immediately headed for the next room to comfort himself with a glass of cognac. His additional concern was not for Emma, but for Fliess, who Freud believed he had wronged by asking him to operate in a foreign city. Masson cannot seriously tarnish Freud's reputation as one of the great minds of recent times. His theories--including those on seduction--still have much to offer...