Adler: On Freud's Defense of Julius von Wagner-Jauregg

(excerpt from Edward Hoffman's, The Drive for Self)

"Postwar Austria had become highly politicized, even in the seemingly lofty field of psychiatry. Weeks after Armistice Day, the country's provisional parliament had passed a law providing for 'the determination and prosecution of neglect of duty in military authorities during the war.' Not long after, a special fact-finding commission was launched by Social Democrats to investigate possible cases of psychiatric malpractice by those serving in the military. In early 1919, serious charges of physical abuse, including torture, were leveled against the esteemed University of Vienna professor who had decisively rejected Adler's application four years before: Julius von Wagner-Jauregg. . . .

"The official inquiry took place in October 1920, and Wagner-Jauregg testified that during the war he had volunteered, out of patriotic fervor, to treat those soldiers deemed 'neurotic' for refusing to fight. Wagner-Jauregg affirmed that at the time he had regarded such men as emotionally disturbed and in need of 'treatment' for placing their own self-interest above loyalty to the beloved empire. Although assembled court evidence could not implicate Wagner-Jauregg directly, it confirmed the appalling reports of former Austrian soldiers (p. 116).

"Physicians without any neurological or psychiatric background had indeed been put in charge of field hospital departments where 'nervous illnesses' were treated. Their practices included cold showers, straitjackets, isolation cells, public humiliation, naked exposure, burning cigarettes on patients' bodies, and applying deliberately painful electrical shocks to their nipples and genitals. Such brutal practices were found to be especially common in German field hospitals, and fatal in at least twenty cases.

"Recruited as an expert witness for the commission, Freud submitted a written 'Memorandum on the Electrical Treatment of War Neurotics.' He argued that such psychiatric brutality had not been based on well-meaning and mistaken theory, but that physicians had adopted those practices out of political expediency to stop soldiers malingering. In particular, Freud singled out the compulsory military draft of the Great War as 'the immediate cause of all war neuroses.'

"Diffusing the issue of Wagner-Jauregg's responsibility by emphasizing the broader, inhumane backdrop of the war, Freud emphasized that, 'The physicians had to play a role which turned them into something like machine guns behind the front, of driving fugitives back. This certainly was the intention of the War Office. . . . But then, this was rather an unsuitable task for the medical profession. The physician should act as the patient's champion.' In short, Freud offered a general condemnation of military psychiatry, but carefully rejected any notion that this respected colleague had done anything deserving retrospective punishment. . . . every mindful of university politics, Freud most likely felt it prudent to refrain from uttering any direct criticism of his department's influential head.

"As later recalled by one of Freud's in-laws visiting Adler that day, the founder of individual psychology was enraged to hear about Freud's testimony. Astutely sensing that Wagner-Jauregg would probably be exonerated as a result, Adler was furious and declared that he would have behaved quite differently in Freud's place. Freud should not have spared Wagner-Jauregg from the consequences of his immoral conduct during the war; to defend him nobly was inappropriate: 'This kind of generosity,' declared Adler, 'is out of place with faced with such enemies'" (p. 117).

Hoffman, Edward (1994). The drive for self: Alfred Adler
and the founding of Individual Psychology. New York:
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

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